Fire Emoji x 3
by Nekouyoku
Summary: Axel gets an accidental text from a wrong number, and ends up making good friends with this Roxas kid. And maybe there was something different from friendship as well, but of course, nothing could ever be that simple.
1. Chapter 1

Axel's phone quietly proclaimed that it was 2:33 pm. 2:33 pm on a lazy Thursday, on a completely unremarkable week, just like last week and the one before. The clothes store was quiet, other than the cliché soundtrack that was so easy to tune out once you'd heard it about a million times. No one walking by the lifeless mannequins on display to the rest of the mall seemed interested in investigating further, so Axel was leaning on the counter behind the register, playing through what was probably his fiftieth game of Temple Run in a row.

"You know they'll fire you for that," Larxene said flatly, poking her head out of the back room and evidently finding Axel exactly how she expected him to be.

"It wouldn't be the first time," he said, not bothering to look up.

She sighed, shaking her head and disappearing back to the one place in the store where there was a blind spot from the security cameras. It was probably the safest place to be when you were looking to slack off and still keep your job, but Axel was beyond the point of caring. That was probably part of the reason he could never stayed employed at the same place for long, but, well, he wouldn't exactly miss this store if they threw him onto the street again.

He slumped over the counter, resting his chin on one of his hands as his other swiped idly at his phone. He was actually managing to get somewhere in his game, and was seconds away from beating his high score when he received a text message that managed to lag the game _just_ enough that he missed a turn and fell into the swamp.

"Fuck." He switched to his messaging app thinking that, maybe, he should be mad about his game, but the thought quickly passed in favor of relief at someone actually contacting him and no longer having to rely on cheap apps for entertainment.

The text wasn't from one of his friends, though. It was from an unknown number. He wasn't entirely sure whether that was more or less exciting. Moments after opening the thread, another message popped up—"Sorry, wrong number," said the person whose name was currently a string of 11 numbers. Axel frowned, and opened up the picture that was attached to the first message. It was a somewhat blurry shot of a math textbook, and the caption provided was, "hey how do you work this one again."

Axel stood up straight and looked over the problem. It was something about angles and triangles and finding x, which he remembered vaguely from some class he was sure he'd taken before, but had no idea how to begin solving it anymore. It'd been a while.

Well…it wasn't like he had anything _else_ to do.

"Hey, Larxene," he called, walking into the back without taking his eyes off his phone. "Could you help me solve this math problem?"

Larxene gave him an appropriately incredulous look, but took the phone when it was offered to her. She squinted at the picture for a moment, then made a few gestures on the screen, raising an eyebrow.

"Why are you solving a math problem for an unknown number," she said, managing to sound disinterested.

"Uhh…because I have nothing else to do? And this person is obviously in dire need, it would be cruel to just ignore them."

Larxene shook her head, not amused with Axel's theatrics as usual, and handed the phone back to its owner.

"You have to set up a ratio to find a second side of the bigger triangle and then use the law of cosines to get the third," she said.

"Right, I know exactly what that means," Axel said. He didn't.

"Just text back. If they don't know what it means then they shouldn't be in that class."

Axel rolled his eyes, but did as she said. "Use a ratio," he echoed, while typing the words out, "for one side, then the…the?"

"Law of cosines."

"The law…of…cosines…for the other one. There. Send."

The bar above the message slowly filled, indicating the message was on its way.

Axel grinned at his screen.

"…so, are you going to go back to the register and _not get fired_, or do you need me to do homework for any more people you don't know?"

"Yeah, yeah…"

Axel went back to the register, eyes glued to his phone. There wasn't much of a reason for Mx. [number redacted] to reply, but there hadn't really been any reason for Axel to either, so maybe the other person was as eager to talk to strangers as he was. Maybe something would happen. He just had a feeling. No one could possibly have anything better to do at 2:35 pm on a Tuesday than reply to a stranger's texts.

Sure enough, three dots appeared at the bottom of the message screen. Then they disappeared. Then stuttered in and out of existence for a few moments, before finally staying and then turning into the word, "thanks."

The next two messages were: "?," "do you usually respond to math homework?"

Axel grinned. He was _right_.

Axel: "nothing better to do"

[Number redacted]: "i could send a few more"

Axel: "i mean, i guess, but i cant actually do math."

"i dropped out of high school"

"i asked my coworker to solve it"

Axel opened the contact information and added information to a few fields.

Math Stranger: "oh"

* * *

><p>That seemed to be all the texter had to say. Not wanting to relinquish the most entertaining thing he had going for him, Axel used snapchat to take a selfie (looking slightly off-camera, a blank expression) and add the caption "retail, slightly better than hs," screenshotted it, then sent it to this Math Stranger.<p>

Let's see where that photo ended up.

Roxas stared at the textbook open in front of him, reading through shapes and numbers over and over as if that would make them stick to his brain any better than they already weren't. He might as well have been reading something in a different language for all the good this was doing him. Math basically _was_ a different language to him.

His phone buzzed, and it was Hayner's head that turned towards the noise first.

"Did Pence respond?" he asked.

"Oh, uh…"

Roxas checked his phone, and almost answered "yes," seeing the math explanation displayed on his screen (what was the law of cosines again? Had he remembered to write that down in his notes?), but then spotted his "sorry wrong number" text.

"…no," he said. "It's…I accidentally texted the wrong number at first and…I guess they responded…?"

He read the text aloud, verbatim, and let Hayner figure out what all those words meant while he continued the conversation. He quickly, however, ran out of replies, and set his phone down to continue trying to get the numbers to stop bouncing off his eyes.

"Is this what you got?" Hayner asked him, scooting a paper of chicken scratch over for Roxas to examine. Though not entirely legible, the numbers written out on there were clearer than those in the book, and the problem started making sense as he looked over it—then his phone buzzed again, and broke his concentration.

"I dunno, I haven't worked it yet," he said, picking up his phone again to check what it was that the buzzing was trying to tell him. Hayner said something after that, but Roxas didn't quite catch the actual words, since he was too busy staring at the image on his screen and not noticing his face heating up.

A person. A person with bright red hair—that couldn't be a natural color, could it?—wearing a V-neck shirt that looked a little too big, with red eyeliner, and…facial tattoos? Small, purple, tear-drop-shaped tattoos under his eyes. A thought surfaced that those should be tacky, but it was drowned out by the louder thought that went something like, _This is an incredibly attractive person_.

_You_, Roxas typed. Delete. _Is that_, delete, _That's_, delete, _Is that an actual picture of you?_ Send.

[Number redacted]: "I think so."

"I mean, I'd hope so, or else I have a lot bigger problems than being a catfisher, considering I just took it."

Roxas grinned at the message, which seemed to get the attention of Hayner.

"Hey," he said, "What're you grinning for? We're supposed to be doing math. No smiling allowed."

"Yeah, sorry, sorry," Roxas went, setting his phone screen-down and returning to his work. He wrote down a short explanation to what his mysterious texter had sent him, finally understanding the process required to get there. He planned on moving on to the next thing, but suddenly found himself with his phone in his hand again. It had vibrated, and that meant he had to pick it up, right?

[Number redacted]: "So, what's your name?"

Roxas's fingers hesitated over the keyboard. The 'stranger danger' lessons that had been hammered into his brain since elementary school told him this was a bad situation, but his instincts didn't have much to say. Then again, they had never really been that sharp.

Before he could start replying, against all reason and parental caution, Hayner snatched the phone out of his hands.

"What's with you and being on this phone all the time? I can't help you study during _study hour_ if you keep texting people," Hayner said, before turning to the screen and skimming over the messages. Evidently, one caught his eye. "Woah," he said, eyebrows going up, "you're being creeped on."

"Am not," Roxas felt the need to insist.

"Some random person is asking for your personal information! That's being creepy!"

"He just wants to know my _name—_give it _back_."

Roxas reached out for his phone, but Hayner leaned away, frowning.

"No," he said, "No, you don't get it back until we've done at least five problems."

"What? Come on—"

"You told me to help you study. This is me helping you. Now get crackin'."

Roxas huffed, but decided to comply. He did ask Hayner to help, after all…and asking Hayner to help was stooping pretty low already. He might as well try to actually follow through with his homework.

With much effort, he turned back to his paper and began, again, the task of trying to figure out how this math stuff worked.

He'd get through it eventually.

* * *

><p>It was on his way home that Roxas remembered Mysterious Texter. Well, that was one use for his spotty memory—forgetting distractions and managing to power his way through unsavory homework.<p>

He pulled out his phone, and relinquished his personal information.

Axel had given up on this particular form of entertainment. Math Stranger hadn't replied for a few hours, and his shift wasn't even near finished yet. This made him…surprisingly sad. The spark of excitement from forming a new friendship, snuffed out in its infancy. He satisfied himself with moping around in a sad imitation of trying to help the customers that slowly trickled in as schools began to let out for the day.

"You look like a blue type of person," he said to someone, nodding sagely. He didn't know what a 'blue type of person' even meant. He really didn't know anything about fashion, and relied more on improvisation than actual knowledge when it came to landing jobs like this.

"I don't know, don't you think it kind of washes me out?" said the customer, holding a sweater between their hands and tugging on it. "My mom said that…"

The rest of the sentence was lost to Axel's ears, because his phone dinged in his pocket. He immediately pulled it out, and seeing who the message was from, abandoned the shopper to go deal with more important things.

_"Is random math person more important than your job?"_ the little Larxene on his shoulder jeered at him. He mouthed this sentence out loud, mocking this imaginary projection of his friend. If anyone saw, it probably looked a little odd, but he was beyond the point of caring.

The text message, from Math Stranger, said one—what Axel thought was a—word. "Roxas." It said "Roxas." Axel stared at the screen, frowning at that collection of letters. He wasn't sure what a "Roxas" was, but it looked a little too intentional—what with the capitalization and punctuation—to be a random keysmash that happened to end up in his inbox.

Then he looked at the message before it, "So, what's your name?" And things became a little bit more clear. Only a little bit, because Axel wasn't sure that "Roxas" was an actual thing that real people were called.

"Is that a name?" he texted back. "I don't think that's a name."

Math Stranger: "It's my name."

Axel: "That's a weird name. Does it mean something?"

Math Stranger: "It means my parents are weird."

Axel pulled up the contact info again to make a small adjustment. He could feel, somewhere in his vicinity, an aura of anger coming from a Larxene-shaped person.

Axel: "Well, my name's Axel."

Roxas: "Your parents are less weird"

Axel didn't feel like replying to that particular comment.

Besides, Larxene was coming to drag him back to work anyways.

* * *

><p>Roxas wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but at some point, he had made a friend through a mistaken text. Or, well, he was pretty sure this "Axel" person was his friend…they texted back and forth at least once a week, which was way more than Roxas ever thought he would text a wrong number.<p>

Their conversations just felt…easy. Way more natural than any other conversations Roxas had over text. He didn't realize how often he deleted and re-wrote messages to his friends in an effort to be understood until Axel repeatedly managed to decipher the oddest of wordings and reply in kind, and Roxas was able to type into the box exactly what was on his mind. It was…weird, kind of. But a good kind of weird.

Axel: "So, how's that math going/"

"?*"

Roxas: "It's not. I don't get math."

Axel: "Wish I could help you there."

"Your friends still helping you out?"

Roxas: "They're doing their best."

Axel: "Ah"

"[an image of an overly complex 'mathematical' equation, featuring symbols that are probably not used in actual math, like drawings of ducks]"

"Math."

Roxas: "Hahaha."

They, at some point, exchanged Snapchat usernames—more like, Roxas created a Snapchat, much to the surprise of his friends (Olette, especially), and pretended like he hadn't done it solely for the purpose of receiving images of this (very nice looking) stranger. Roxas himself preferred the camera facing away from his face, more often sending photos of whatever his attention was currently focused on (pets, video games, annoying brothers), but Axel refrained from commenting on it.

It worked. It…worked pretty well, actually.

* * *

><p>A short list of things about Axel, according to various text conversations over the span of a few short months, and Roxas' selectively accurate memory:<p>

Axel was tall. Like, really tall, if the angle of his snapchats were anything to go by.

Axel worked at some sort of clothes store. This one was pretty obvious. If it wasn't in the background of almost everything, Roxas would still know, because Axel spent a good 30% of the time complaining about customers. But the stories he told were pretty amusing, so Roxas couldn't begrudge him that.

Oh, related: Axel had a very strange sense of humor. His stories were frequently peppered with peculiar details and very obvious exaggerations that weren't really _jokes_, but you kind of had to laugh at them.

Axel was a high school dropout. We've already covered this one. Roxas kept trying to figure out exactly _when_ it was that Axel had dropped out, without asking outright, because that could provide a hint to his age. As far as he knew, Axel was probably…20? He couldn't be much older than 20, could he?

Axel lived alone. Or, at least, he didn't seem to be living with any family—Roxas wasn't entirely sure whether this Larxene person who kept popping up in conversations was some sort of girlfriend or fiancée or something. The idea kind of made Roxas's head hurt, though, so he assumed Axel lived alone.

Another thing about Axel, that Roxas came to realize, or…more like, came to realize was kind of a problem:

Axel was really attractive.

This was a weird feeling for Roxas. Usually the extent of his attractions was admitting someone had an appealing look to them, and moving on. Axel definitely had an appealing look to him, for sure—though it wasn't a type you'd really see anywhere on a billboard. The lines of his face were a little too sharp and it never really looked like he'd gotten quite enough sleep the night before, but something about that divergence made Roxas like him even more.

But Axel was also, just, attractive. He was funny and kind, in a certain way, though unkind in others. And above all was something Roxas just couldn't quite find the word for.

In short, they could talk. Well, text, at least. This wasn't an unheard of occurrence—Roxas had other friends, of course, but the majority of the time it took so long for Roxas to warm up to someone that by the time he decided he liked them they had already pegged him as cold and stand-offish. Axel was just…there. And Roxas liked him being there. They fell into such a comfortable dialogue that it felt like they'd known each other for years.

It was weird, wasn't it.

An accidental slip of the finger on a phone screen suddenly brought such a person into Roxas's life.

Sometimes, he almost thought he could believe in destiny.

* * *

><p>Roxas walked down the empty hallway at his school, staring at the bathroom pass in his hand, the voices of teachers lecturing behind shut doors seeming far away, or in a different place. Instead of the bathroom, he headed to a small classroom he knew would be empty at this hour. He felt a slight pang of anxiety at the thought of breaking the rules—he really should go back to class—but he needed a break. Just a short one, then he'd go back. Once his brain stopped feeling like it was suffocating.<p>

He sat in the back of the empty classroom, out of sight of the door, and laid his head down on a desk, closing his eyes and letting his thoughts settle.

He took a deep breath.

Then his phone buzzed.

He flinched, startled, and quickly pulled it out of his pocket to see who it was—though he already had a pretty good idea. Considering most of his friends were in class right now—yeah, it was Axel. Roxas laid his head back down on the desk and opened his inbox.

"ughhhhh work suuuuuuuucks," said the message. Then, a few seconds later, "your day going any better?"

"It's alright," Roxas tapped out, without thinking. But then he stared at the message for a moment, sighed, and backspaced. "no not really," is what he sent instead.

Axel: "boo"

"Generally shitty day or did something happen?"

Roxas: "I had to escape to an empty class"

"I don't know this one class is hard to think in"

"which sucks considering the material is hard enough anyways"

Axel: "oh yeah. That's the worst"

"Are you allowed to wear headphones?"

Roxas frowned. That question seemed out of the blue.

Roxas: "no, teachers confiscate them if they see them out"

"Why?"

Axel: "Sometimes listening to music helps"

"Well I mean it helps me. I don't know how your brain works"

"it may just be a shitty class."

Roxas: "Yeah…"

He sighed, and sat up. Even with that not-so-helpful conclusion, the conversation had Roxas feeling a little bit better. Enough to go back to class and try to power through the last twenty minutes, at least.

"I guess I should go back to class. Text you later," he sent, and stood up to walk back to class, though maybe a little slowly than was called for.

His phone went off one last time while he was in the hallway, and he couldn't help but check it.

"I'll miss you!" was the message, ending with a few winking-and-kissing smiley faces.

Roxas felt his face flush, and a smile tugging at his cheeks.

He really, really liked talking to Axel.

Axel didn't really consider himself the texting type. He first got a phone out of necessity and then slowly found ways to use it to relieve his ever-encroaching boredom, which was kind of also a necessity at times. He'd take face-to-face interaction over digital messages any day. But after the fateful Wrong Number Incident of That One Thursday, his phone became his faithful companion (at least, when he actually remembered to bring it places).

Maybe a little too much of a faithful companion, really. He already was in approximately last place for any type of employee of the month award they could have around his workplace, and now he was hardly waiting for the store to empty out before he replied to his messages.

"Are you _trying_ to lose your job?" Larxene snapped at him, trying and failing to swipe the phone out of his hand.

"This job isn't worth being bored out of my mind for nine hours straight," he replied, not even looking up from his screen. He was having a very invigorating conversation about hair products, thank you very much.

"You're probably not going to be thinking that when you end up on the street again."

Axel shrugged. He'd worry about that when the time came.

"Are you texting that guy again?"

Axel looked up at her this time.

A customer hovered around the two of them, trying to figure out the best way to interrupt this conversation and ask for assistance.

"I have _friends_, you know," Axel insisted.

"Hardly. You are texting him, aren't you."

"Yep," he said, and spotted the floundering customer out of the corner of his eye. "Hey, Larxene, go do your job," he said, looking back at his phone and making a move to find a more secluded section of the store.

Larxene swiped at his phone, and managed to grab it this time. "No," she said, pointing with the hand she had the phone in. "You haven't done anything all shift. Go practice your people skills."

Axel rolled his eyes, at length, but nevertheless soon put on a façade of upmost politeness and walked over to the customer, who could no doubt see through this retail ruse of a face.

"How can I help you today?"

* * *

><p>Roxas did not have a job. He had a hard enough time getting through his homework as it was, he didn't need to be trying to balance work on top of that. Besides, he was only 16 and hadn't found the time to learn how to drive yet, so it would have been a hassle anyways. If any of his older brothers would just take a little bit of time to take him out on the road every once and a while…<p>

Well, it wasn't that big of a deal. Driving meant more responsibility and less time to sit around on the couch playing video games and trying to pretend he didn't have math homework. And, more recently, text.

He was always kind of reliant on texting, and had even gotten his phone taken away a few times in class because of it, before he figured out how to not get caught. But recently he'd been on his phone all the time, because of…well…

He'd rather not anyone know. Hayner's reaction when Axel had just asked his name had been enough of an indication of how people would probably react to his newfound friend, he wasn't about to go around telling people about his new stranger buddy who probably knew more about his life than his parents did at this point, barring legal records and stuff like that.

And, well, Axel still didn't know what he actually looked like. He hadn't quite worked up the courage to reveal that.

He paused his game as multiple notifications piled up on his phone screen. "Alright, alright," he told it, picking it up. It looked like Axel had sent him about five snapchats in a row, and they were still coming.

Roxas sat back and opened the app to play through what was bound to be a thrilling chronicle.

The first snap was a picture of some sort of unidentifiable article of clothing hanging on a rack, in what Roxas felt safe assuming was Axel's place of employment. The caption was, "What is this?" Roxas squinted at the snap until it went away, train of thought no doubt similar to what prompted Axel to send the picture in the first place.

The next was a picture of the rack from a different angle. "It's hung up with a bunch of shirts."

The article of clothing again. "Is it a shirt?"

The clothing, except with Axel's hand slightly in the frame, holding up one corner of the thing in question to see more of the fabric. "I can't find any arm holes."

Then it was a picture of Axel, holding his phone up to a mirror to take a picture of himself wearing the article of clothing wrapped around his neck. "Maybe it's a scarf." The hangar was still on it. He, in short, looked ridiculous, and Roxas couldn't help but laugh.

The next image, similar to the previous but Axel sporting a mysterious-article-of-clothing belt instead, didn't help matters.

The conclusion of the story was Axel figuring out that, "Oh fuck it's a shawl," and returning it to its proper place, which was not the shirt section.

Roxas went to take a picture to reply with—but was interrupted by a voice _way too close to his ear_ saying, "Who's thaaaat?" in an excellent imitation of a gossipy elementary schooler.

Roxas yelped, and fumbled his phone, catching it again just before it fell to the ground.

"Sora!" he complained, turning his phone over to check the screen. It indicated that he'd sent something. Oh, god.

"Oops," went his brother, sounding completely unapologetic as he crawled over the back of the sofa to sit next to Roxas. "But really, who is it? Did you make a friend? Are they from school? The internet? Are you daaaating them?"

Roxas blinked at the onset of questions, and flushed at the last one. "I—no! They're—uh, he's just…" the circumstances of their meeting played through Roxas's head, and he tried to think of the best way to explain them.

There really wasn't a way to say "I accidentally texted him and now we're friends" that didn't seem…odd.

Sora was waiting patiently for Roxas's answer, though, so he supposed he'd have to figure out something to say.

"It's kind of stupid," he began. "I mean…you know how Pence got that new phone a few months ago? Well I tried to text him about something but I accidentally switched two of the numbers so…I ended up texting this guy. And I guess we're friends now…or…something…"

"Or something?" Sora repeated, raising an eyebrow. "So you _are_ dating."

"Uh," went Roxas, trying to seem casual about it, though he definitely didn't _feel_ that way, "No. I think he has a girlfriend, actually. Maybe. I'm pretty sure…" he wasn't actually sure at all. But somehow it was easier to tell himself that.

"Oh," said Sora. Then he frowned, and stared at Roxas for a moment.

Roxas frowned back. "What?" he said, half defensively and half out of genuine confusion.

"…nothing," Sora said, though not without some consideration. Then he smiled, demeanor changing a little too fast for Roxas's comfort. "So!" he said, "What's his name?"

"Axel…?" Roxas said, slowly. He was still a little suspicious of his brother's intentions, but the opportunity to talk about Axel overruled his hesitance. "He works at a clothing store in a mall somewhere. He's super tall and does his hair like a porcupine—er, I guess you probably saw that. I thought he was kind of weird at first but…well, he is kind of weird. But not scary weird, so. I don't know. I like talking to him."

"Hmm," went Sora.

"…hm?"

"Hmmmmmmmmm."

Roxas stared blankly as Sora crossed his arms and nodded very slowly.

"Well!" Sora said. "I think you should ask if he has a girlfriend. You know, just to make sure."

"Uh," went Roxas, but Sora was already getting up.

He patted Roxas unnecessarily hard on the shoulder, said, "Good luck," made a big show of winking at him, and then left.

Roxas stared at the empty space where his brother used to be.

That was…weird.

He picked up his game controller again, but then suddenly remembered that accidental snapchat he'd sent. He forsook the controller in favor of his phone.

One snap from Axel. It was a picture of him, making a very confused face, with the caption "?"

Roxas went back to the messaging app.

"Yeah sorry about that snap I was about to reply when my brother scared the shit out of me and made me drop my phone. I guess it sent something," he explained.

"oooooh okay," was the response. Then, "You have a brother? Younger or older?"

Roxas: "he's older but only by 2 minutes"

Axel: "? Are you a twin?"

Roxas: "yeah"

Axel: "hot"

Roxas wrinkled his nose.

"ok, gross," he sent.

Axel: "hahaha sorry. No more sexy twin jokes."

"so do you look the same? (no more jokes I promise)"

Roxas: "yeah."

"people used to not be able to tell us apart so I bleached my hair."

Axel: "Are you still blonde?"

Roxas: "Yeah"

Axel: "Am I allowed to say THAT's hot?"

Roxas blushed. "you don't even know what I look like," he began to type. But, no. He didn't really want to bring that up.

"I guess," he sent instead.

"Nice."


	2. Chapter 2

Axel was, for once, actually doing work while he was at work. This was in no way related to the fact that Roxas wasn't texting him currently, of course. He just…happened to…you know…the mood struck him. Whatever. He had a passion for folding jeans.

Well, actually, they did look pretty nice when they were finally all folded and stacked on top of each other in just the right manner, but the knowledge that customers were going to come through any minute and mess them all up, and then Axel would be here doing this all over again, kind of ruined any sort of enjoyment he may have gotten out of it.

So he folded them very slowly, in an effort to maintain order for as long as possible. It's not like he had any incentive to hurry. He was paid by the hour. By all logic he should take as long as humanely possible.

Then his phone buzzed, and his productivity came to a halt.

He glanced around—oh, there were actually some people in the store. Oh, well—and pulled out his phone. "Could you do me a weird favor?" was the message from Roxas.

"I would love to," Axel responded.

"Look up at the ceiling," was apparently the favor that Roxas needed done.

Axel frowned at his phone. Well, whatever. "ok?" he texted, and then looked up at the ceiling.

Yep, that sure was a ceiling. He hadn't actually looked at the ceiling much before. It's not like there was anything to see.

He pondered it for a moment, before turning back to his phone to report his progress. But there was already a message from Roxas, which said, "Holy shit." Then, in quick succession, two more. "Uh," and, "I'm in your store."

Axel stared at his phone. Roxas was…there? Here?

He looked up, and did his best to look around the store casually. Hmm. No one to his left, so—

Oh.

Well.

It was probably the guy with a phone in his hand staring at him from halfway behind a clothes rack.

Axel stared back.

Axel blinked.

"Roxas?" he mouthed.

The guy nodded.

Holy shit.

Axel shoved his phone back in his pocket, abandoning his jean-folding task and striding over to Roxas, hardly noticing the grin on his own face.

"Roxas!" he said, barely refraining himself from doing something drastic like…hugging him, or something. "I…you…you live around here? Why didn't you tell me! Do you live around here?"

"Uh," went Roxas. Then he frowned and looked away. Then his face turned red, and he covered it with his hand that wasn't holding a cell phone, furrowed eyebrows still visible through his fingers.

"Hey, don't worry, take your time," Axel said, still grinning. Holy shit! Roxas! The real Roxas! Live and in person!

"We have the same area code," Roxas said into his hand. Axel blinked.

"Yeah?"

"I mean…we have the same area code, so of course we live close. Right?" he said, moving his hand and making eye contact again. His face was still a little pink.

Axel's gaze drifted up towards the ceiling. "Riiiight," he said in realization. "Well, now I know, I guess."

"Yeah," Roxas said.

Their conversation lapsed into silence for a moment, but it didn't seem awkward. It was kind of a lot to take in, especially for Axel. He didn't know what he imagined Roxas like, but this was definitely not it. Not that it was bad, really, just…well, a lot to take in. This Roxas was…

Was…

Really, really short. Axel was tall, sure, but most of his friends were, too, this was like…Zexion-level short, and that wasn't standard for a 20-year-old. But, then again, Axel didn't really know how old Roxas was, so…

Wait.

"Uh, how old are you?"

Roxas blinked.

"Sixteen?" he said, as if he wasn't entirely sure of it himself.

Axel stared at him.

"Sixteen?" he asked. "As in, ten plus six. Sixteen."

"Yeah," went Roxas, frowning. "Sixteen. Is that…okay?"

"Ohhh, god," Axel went, putting his hands over his face. Sixteen. Sure, past Axel, sure teenagers wouldn't be dealing with that kind of high-level math, of course you would know that, you, the man who didn't finish high school.

He dropped his hands, and assumed a calm expression, while his brain internally screamed at him.

"Yes," he said, flatly, ignoring the heat rising to his face. "Sixteen is fine."

Roxas furrowed his eyebrows, in something of a "what you said definitely did not match what you did but I can't really figure out what the incongruity means" expression, and Axel put on a smile.

"So!" Axel said, assuming his polite-store-assistant affect. "What brings you to this corner of the mall anyways?"

"Well," said Roxas, "shopping."

Axel nodded. "That is generally what people come here for. Do you need clothes? I can help you find stuff. I mean, that is technically what I'm paid to do."

"Technically," Roxas repeated. "Actually, um…I'm here with a friend, but. She wanted to go to the…" he gestured vaguely behind him. "The bath stuff store, and that place gives me a headache, so I came over here…which worked out." He laughed. "I can't believe you were this close the entire time!"

"Well, I mean, we do have the same area code," Axel said, grinning.

"Oh, shut up!" Roxas said, shoving his arm and laughing. Oh, so he was a touchy type. Axel would have to keep that in mind.

"So, who's this friend of yours?" he asked.

"Oh, um…do you want to meet her?"

"If she'd be okay with that."

"Sure, I'll go ask her," Roxas said, and ran off to go, presumably, fetch his friend.

Axel watched him go, and sighed. Roxas was even more adorable than he'd imagined, wasn't he.

…adorable in a completely platonic, non-creepy way, of course. Axel rubbed his eyes, scowling. Sixteen years old. Roxas is still a kid.

When he opened his eyes again, and the stars faded, Larxene was right in front of him.

"FU—uuahhhh, augh," went Axel, approximately, in an aborted curse when he realized there were customers around who probably wouldn't appreciate his language. "Jesus, Larxene," he said, quietly. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

"Yeah, yeah," she went. "Who was that?"

"Who was what?" Axel said, playing dumb for the mere purpose of being irritating.

"The kid."

"There are a lot of kids."

"The blonde one," Larxene said, scowling.

"How very descriptive of you."

"God dammit, Axel, you know who I'm talking about."

He laughed. "Do I?"

Larxene punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow!" he went. "Okay, okay. That was Roxas," he relinquished.

"…wait, you mean that guy you've been texting non-stop recently?"

"Yeah!" went Axel, not quite noticing how his expression was slowly starting to glow with excitement. "Apparently he lives around here! Isn't that great? He just went to get his friend, he's going to come back and introduce us—"

"Is he, like, twelve?" interrupted Larxene.

Axel's face fell.

"…he's," he started, expression obviously pained, "Yeah. He's…sixteen."

Larxene stared at him.

Axel nodded somberly.

Then, Larxene started laughing. Howling, really, full bent-over-wiping-tears-from-eyes cackling.

"Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I know," Axel said, until Larxene finally stood up and caught her breath. A few customers were looking on wondering what in the world all the commotion was about, but that wasn't really anything new.

"Oh my god," said Larxene. "He's jailbait! He's fucking jailbait! God, Axel, you have the worst luck."

Axel just continued nodding. He didn't really have anything to say at this point. Larxene was covering basically all of it.

"Hey," she said, suddenly serious.

"Hm?"

"You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?"

"Stupid is my middle name."

"Axel."

Axel sighed.

"You have full permission," he said, "to report anything shady I do directly to this kid's parents, okay? And by that I mean, no, I'm not going to do anything stupid."

"You've done some pretty stupid shit in the past," Larxene warned.

"It's been, like…at least two years now, though, come on. I'm a better man now."

Larxene raised an eyebrow at him.

Axel sighed. Again.

"Okay," he said, raising his left hand and putting the other on his heart. Then he paused, and switched them. "Okay," he said, again, "I solemnly swear I will not do anything shady to this kid until he turns eighteen, even if he gets on his knees and begs me."

Even if that was quite the mental image. Wait—no, Axel. Down, boy.

"I'm going to hold you to that," Larxene said.

"I'm counting on it."

"Good. Now, get your ass back to work."

"Yeah, yeah," went Axel, slinking back over to his half-folded pile of jeans. He couldn't really bring himself to be too upset about it, though. He'd made a friend! A real, walking-talking friend that he could hang out with and everything. It was great enough when him and Roxas had been texting buddies, of course, but…this was just the icing on the friendship cake.

Besides, soon enough, Roxas had returned to the store, with another person in tow. They looked weirdly similar, actually…or maybe it was just the fact that they were both the same height and had the same color hair. The similarities sort of ended there.

"Axel, this is, uh, Namine," Roxas said, gesturing between them. "Namine, Axel."

"It's nice to meet you," said this Namine, smiling sweetly and extending a hand. Axel hurriedly took it once he realized what was going on.

"I'm sure it is," he said. "I bet Roxas hasn't shut up about me."

"Well," Namine said, turning towards Roxas and laughing. "He kind of hasn't, actually."

"Namine!" Roxas complained, face turning red. It tended to do that a lot, didn't it?

His friend just laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.

Axel just looked between them, taking note of the interaction bemusedly.

"Oh!" went Namine, suddenly.

"Oh?" questioned Roxas. Namine thought for a moment, and then leaned over to whisper in Roxas's ear.

Axel blinked. They probably weren't talking about him, right?

"Hmm," went Roxas, out loud. "Do you think that'd be okay?"

"I'm sure it would," Namine answered.

Roxas turned back to Axel.

"Hey," he said, "One of my friends'…friends'…friends', and so on, is sort of throwing this party thing over the weekend, so…um, do you…maybe want to come? I mean, if you're not working, or…there will probably be a lot of high schoolers there…"

"I'm there," Axel said.

"Uh, really?"

"Yeah. I haven't had enough chances to get out recently. It'll be fun, right?"

"I…well, that's the idea, I guess," Roxas said.

"Right. Well, text me the details, alright?"

"Uh, sure. Um. See you then?"

"That's the plan."

Axel waved, and Namine directed Roxas out of the store, evidently moving on to the next shop on her agenda.

Axel just barely caught Roxas grabbing Namine's sleeve and all but jumping excitedly, grinning and talking about Axel-could-guess-what, before they went out of view.

Well. Shit.

* * *

><p>Axel pulled his bike up to the street curb—right in between two cars, which would probably have a hell of a time pulling out now, but whatever—and checked his phone to verify the address. Not that he really had too. The amount of cars lined up along the street was a pretty good indication that there was a party going on around here somewhere.<p>

He kicked the kickstand down into kick-standing position and put his keys in the pocket of his jacket, looking around at the houses in the fading light. Shit, this was a high-class neighborhood. Axel felt like he was going to get arrested for, like, existing there.

Oh, well. He'd have to grin and bear it for now.

He sent off a quick message to Roxas—"Think I found the house. You here too?" and got a "Yeah, I'll go wait at the front door," back. Well, how chivalrous of him.

Axel dismounted his bike and headed towards the house in question. There wasn't any loud party music emanating onto the street, which he took as a good sign. Somehow he didn't feel like Roxas would be into that kind of scene, anyways.

Sure enough, a few moments later he saw the door open and a little spikey-headed figure pop out and look around. Axel increased his pace a little to meet him.

"Hey," he said, walking up to the porch. "What's up?"

"Party stuff? Come on, we're about to start Mario Kart," Roxas said, and then disappeared back into the house. Axel followed him, eyes squinting for a moment at the change in light.

"There's pizza and stuff if you want some," Roxas said, pointing at what Axel presumed was a kitchen. Axel sniffed the air a little bit.

"And 'stuff,' " he said. "Right."

"Oh," went Roxas, frowning. "Yeah, they said they would keep that outside, but…" he shook his head, and made his way to another room. There weren't too many people here, compared to the size of the house, which Axel could appreciate.

That still didn't mean there was room on the couch, though.

Roxas sat in between two people on the floor, picking up a vacated controller. Axel leaned against a wall, for lack of a better place. Well, he was sure he could shove his way in somewhere, but…people. Parties. You know.

It turned out that Roxas was surprisingly good at Mario Kart. Which, Axel tried not to be surprised about people that he'd just met—who knows what they were good at, really—but Roxas ended up winning so badly that two of the four people trying to play against him simply professed defeat.

"You come play, Axel," Roxas said, grinning and holding an abandoned remote out to him. Axel shrugged, and went to sit on the floor next to him, taking the controller

"How does this work?" he asked, looking at the thing in his hands. It wasn't like he'd never played video games before, but this thing was…shaped oddly.

"You steer like this," Roxas said, making a sort of steering-wheel motion with the controller. Axel imitated him, frowning. Well, whatever. Roxas then proceeded to explain, in full detail, what each of the buttons would do during gameplay, and half of it went in one of Axel's ear and out the other, but he figured he got enough of it to get through a round. Probably.

Then the race started, and Axel came in dead last place, even with the constant tips from Roxas, which most often consisted of, "No, look, that means you're going the wrong direction."

"No, no, I'm getting the hang of it," Axel insisted after the first race, grinning.

Though after a few more races, eventually it became obvious that if he was getting the hang of it, he was doing it very slowly, and soon ended up giving up the controller to a more worthy contestant.

"I tried my best," he said, shrugging at Roxas's look of incredulity. "Have fun continuing to destroy these casuals, I'm going to get something to eat." He pat Roxas on the back, and ended his humiliation by escaping to the kitchen.

Considering the time, the party can't have been going on for very long, but the pizza pickings were already very meager. Well, Axel didn't each much, anyways. He picked up a sad-looking slice of pizza and looked around for a good place to sit.

Instead, he found someone who was staring at him with a very suspicious look on his face. But more important than that, this person was wearing camo-patterened cargo shorts, which, listen, Axel did not need to be employed at a clothes store to realize how tacky that was. He might have to place a few choice words of advice here.

"Who are you?" said Mr. Cargo, accusingly. Axel raised his eyebrows. Had he done something wrong already? He hadn't insulted this guy's pants out loud, had he?

"Axel," said Axel, though he was pretty sure that wasn't the question that was being asked. "Why, who are you?"

Mr. Cargo decided to ignore that question.

"Aren't you that weird guy who responded to Roxas's math text? What are you doing here? Are you stalking him?"

Axel stared at him. Stalking? He wasn't stalking Roxas, was he? He thought over their previous interactions. He was the one, he supposed, who initiated their relationship, but he never asked for any particularly personal details (had he?) and Roxas was the one who showed up in his store one day, and Roxas was definitely the one who invited him to this party.

He was pretty sure he wasn't stalking Roxas, and not even in a no-I'm-just-keeping-an-eye-on-them way this time.

"No," he said. "Roxas invited me here."

Mr. Cargo continued glaring at him for a moment. Axel took a bite of pizza.

"…well, okay," relinquished his accuser. "You better be telling the truth." Axel was at least ninety-two percent certain he was telling the truth. "I'm Roxas's real-life friend, Hayner, and if you lay a hand on him I'm going to kick your ass, okay?"

Axel put his hands up in surrender, not being able to verbally reply mostly due to his mouth being full, but at least partially due to the sheer absurdity of the situation, which Axel really wasn't entirely sure how to reply to.

This Hayner "Mr. Cargo" Lastname stormed off into another room, leaving Axel supremely confused in his wake.

He was pretty sure that his mere physical presence at this party had changed his status to "real-life" friend by any definition.

But, well, even if it hadn't, at least he was still categorized as some kind of friend, even by…hostile outsiders to this particular relationship.

…

He wasn't actually stalking Roxas, was he?

* * *

><p>It turned out that really, the only reason Roxas was at this party was to play video games. He didn't seem to be doing anything else, at least, so Axel had to assume that was what he was there for. It was kind of a spectacle in itself, really, but eventually everyone got tired of trying to win and Roxas was left to socialize with the few friends he had there. Though his "socialization" at that point seemed to consist of standing kind of near them and drinking soda.<p>

Axel edged up to him. "I think I'm all partied out," he said, though not entirely truthfully. It was fun hanging with Roxas and all, but his scene tended to be a bit more…well, let's just say he wouldn't be inviting Roxas to any of those anytime soon.

"Oh," went Roxas. "Yeah, I think I am, too."

"Want a ride home?" Axel offered, holding up his keys.

Roxas stared at them.

"Those don't look like car keys," he said.

"Well, no," said Axel. "I have a bike."

"Do you have an extra helmet?"

"Well," said Axel, slowly, "No…"

"Then that's probably a bad idea."

Axel huffed, and put his keys back into his pocket. Even if Roxas was right, that didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

"I could walk you home, then," Axel said.

Roxas gave him a look, and Axel wasn't entirely sure what it meant. He suddenly felt a surge of anxiety. Was he being pushy about this?

"Though I understand if you don't want me knowing where you live," he said.

"Oh, no," went Roxas, "It's fine…it's just…I mean, are you sure?"

"I'm very sure."

"Well…"

Roxas looked around at the rest of those present, trying to figure out what it was he next needed to do.

"I'll meet you outside in a little bit, okay? I should probably say goodbye to everyone," Roxas said. Axel nodded, and headed to the porch.

He sat on the steps and tried to look for stars in the sky. Either it wasn't dark enough, or not clear enough. Either way, there wasn't much to look at.

Axel's heart pounded in his chest.

He tried not to let the doubts get to him, but…well, it was good that he was doubting himself, wasn't it? Or was it? Should he call Larxene? No—walking someone home was an okay thing. That wasn't creepy.

Was it?

Axel put his face in his hands, then ran them up to his hair to ruffle it in frustration. Deep breaths. You're doing okay so far. Just…

He'd ask Roxas. Yeah.

Though how do you phrase "am I being creepy?" without seeming like you're fishing for a particular answer?

Before this train of thought finished, the door opened behind Axel, startling him enough to flinch. He looked back, and Roxas was halfway between a smile and an expression of worry.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Axel, standing up and smiling. "Just a little jumpy, I guess. It happens. People, you know." He shook his hands a little bit, releasing energy.

"Oh," went Roxas. "Uh—it's this way," he said, walking towards what Axel presumed was his house. Then, "Do you get nervous around people?"

"Only sometimes," Axel said, falling into step beside him. He had to walk a little slower than usual. God, Roxas was short. Only sometimes, like when they started asking questions that were a little more pointed than they had probably intended. "Hey, can I ask you kind of a weird question?"

Roxas looked up at him, expression unreadable in the low light. "Sure, I guess," he said.

"Do you feel like I'm stalking you?"

Roxas was silent for a moment. "Uh," he went. "No? Why? Should I?"

"Well, no," Axel said, maybe a little bit too fast. Deep breaths. "I mean, I'm not stalking you. I think. It's…well, I just wanted to make sure that's how you felt, as well."

Roxas went back to looking at the road.

"That was definitely kind of a weird question," he said.

"Yeah," said Axel. "Sorry."

"Well, it's okay, it's just…do you feel like you're stalking me? Or…?"

"No, but I've been wrong before."

Shit. That probably wasn't the best piece of information to share.

"What?" went Roxas. Then, "About stalking? Like…you've stalked someone before?"

Axel sighed. It was way too early in their relationship for this conversation. Or, well, they had known each other for months now, hadn't they? Somehow it seemed like it hadn't been that long…then again, it also seemed like they'd been talking forever. Maybe Axel just wasn't the best at conceptualizing time.

"It's…kind of a long story," he said. That wasn't entirely true, but he wanted to give Roxas an out to this while there still was one.

"It's kind of a long walk…"

Roxas didn't sound entirely sure of himself, but Axel supposed it was invitation enough.

"Well," he said. Then he paused. How should he even say this? "I…I sort of used to…well, I still do…or…augh. Give me a second."

"Alright," Roxas said.

Somehow, that reply took a little bit of the pressure off. Axel spent a few moments sorting out what he wanted to say in his head.

"I have a hard time with relationships," he started. "I used to have a lot harder time with them, but I've gotten better recently." Have I? Yes. I have. "At some point I…well, I started stalking someone, and I managed to convince myself that that wasn't what I was doing. All of my friends started warning me about it, but I didn't believe them until...let's just say things didn't work out. I didn't really get that I was doing something wrong until, like, months after the person broke up with me, so…"

He sighed. It had been a while since he'd shared this with anyone.

"Anyways, one of your friends in there asked if I was stalking you, and I think he was joking but…I felt like I needed to make sure, you know. For complete peace of mind."

The words hung in the air for a moment as Roxas didn't respond, and Axel tried to focus on his footsteps and not the thoughts rising up to his head. He's creeped out now—Stop. He's not going to want to be friends—No. Stop. Stop.

"Oh," is what Roxas said. That didn't really help things. Axel wanted to ask for a clearer response, but he had a feeling Roxas was working on one. "Uh. Who said that?"

Well, that at least gave Axel something else to think about it. He was pretty sure the guy had said his name, but all he could think of was—

"Camo pants."

"Ooooh."

Axel laughed, despite himself. Was that really a good enough identifier? Well, it wasn't like anyone else would be caught dead wearing those things.

"Yeah," said Roxas, "He's been…he's kind of over protective of me. He doesn't really like me talking to you, but all my other friends seem to think you're pretty cool, so I dunno, I think it's pretty safe to ignore him."

Roxas laughed, and Axel felt a little bit better. Good, so he wasn't in the minority opinion here.

"And, um," Roxas said again. "I really don't feel like you're stalking me at all. I get nervous around people too a lot but not around you so much so, you're the opposite of creepy right now. I hope we get to hang out more, actually."

Axel sighed in relief.

"Yeah," he said. "Me, too. Can you let me know if you ever feel like I'm coming on too strong, though? Think you can do that?"

"Sure," said Roxas. "Definitely."

"Thanks. It means a lot."

* * *

><p>Roxas had them part ways at his street corner, because, "Oh, wait, now that I think about it my family is going to start asking weird questions if they see you so…uh…goodnight."<p>

Axel had a very enjoyable ride home. Even if the walk back to his bike was a little lonely.


	3. Chapter 3

Quite contrary to Axel's first worry that he might be stalking Roxas, the guy—kid, ugh—showed up at his place of employment again not a week later. He tried to be sneaky about it, too, and it was adorable. Adorable in a completely platonic way, naturally. The way dogs are adorable. The way people you're absolutely not allowed in any shape or form to be romantically attracted to for at least a few years are adorable.

Axel immediately noticed him when he walked in, of course, but decided he was going to pretend he didn't. For one, he was supposed to be staying at the register, so it wasn't like he could go over and talk to him anyways—and for two, it was amusing to watch Roxas shuffle around looking at clothes and pretending he wasn't there to talk to Axel.

Like, he would be willing to give the kid the benefit of the doubt if he didn't keep glancing over to where Axel was before staring unconvincingly at an article of clothing. He kind of doubted Roxas would ever be caught dead in that color.

Eventually, Axel just stared directly at Roxas, waiting for another surreptitious glance. When it came, Axel smiled, and fluttered his eyelashes. _Please stop. This is embarrassing for all of us._

Roxas shuffled over to the counter, looking around to make sure there wasn't anyone in line before bypassing the little barriers.

"Fancy seeing you here," Axel said, smirking.

"Shut up," Roxas huffed, face turning red. "Um. Do you get off work soon?"

"Yep. In approximately," Axel checked his wrist, as if there was actually any sort of timepiece there—you know, as if he wasn't constantly aware of exactly how many minutes there were left of his shift at all times. "Forty-seven minutes. Do you want to hang out after?"

"If you don't have anything to do…"

"I was planning on going home and sleeping, but I can definitely postpone that a few hours."

Roxas smiled. Yeah, Axel could definitely put off sleeping for a little bit for this.

"Okay!" he said. "I guess I should probably leave you alone until then, though?"

"Yeah, go look at something more interesting than the shit we have here," Axel said, waving a hand. Then he glanced over his shoulder. Good, no management was there to hear him shit-talking the stock.

The _shit_ stock.

"I'll text you when I'm all done here."

Roxas nodded a few times.

"Uh…see you then, I guess," he said, and then hurried out of the store.

Axel checked his phone.

Forty_ six_ minutes.

* * *

><p>A few minutes before his shift ended, because it wasn't like the chump change he would have earned amounted to much anyways, Axel made his way out of the store and pulled his phone out. "So, where should I meet you?" he texted, wandering vaguely towards the center of the complex. He'd be closest to everything there, so it seemed like the best place to go.<p>

"I'm in the food court," is what Roxas texted back. Axel looked around at the steady flow of people crowding the stores. He could almost see the hive of customers that had to be currently buzzing around the food court. Like Axel could find anyone in that mess.

"You're going to have to be more specific," he requested. Eventually, he got the message "I'll go stand in front of Taco Bell," which was a pretty specific area, so it would suffice.

Axel kept his phone out to avoid eye contact with anyone he passed, and made it to the food court (which was, by the way, in the middle of the complex, so he had been heading in the right direction in the first place. Ha! Planning). He looked around, trying to find anything short with a spikey head. There were way too many people for this.

He placed himself in front of the previously named restaurant and looked around. Ah—there. Roxas was leaning against a column, headphones over his ears, eyes glued to some sort of handheld console.

Axel walked over and stood in front of him.

Roxas glanced up at him, briefly, and then looked back to his game. "Give me," he said, slowly, attention obviously fully occupied, "Just a second…"

Axel grinned and stood back, arms folded. Roxas was pressing way more buttons on that thing than could possibly be required for gameplay. Right?

Not too long after, Roxas practically deflated, a disappointed look on his face. "Lost," he said mournfully, flipping a switch on the console and slipping it into his jacket pocket. "I can't beat this guy, you can't even attack him, you just have to dodge a million times and hope…" he shook his head, and then looked up at Axel. "Ah, you probably don't care."

Axel shrugged. "I mean, I don't have any idea what you're talking about, but if you're interested in it then I'll happily listen."

Roxas blushed, and looked away as he started winding up his earbuds to put in his pocket. "Um…okay. Well…so, I was wondering if, uh…"

Axel raised an eyebrow. "Yes?" he prompted.

"Well, you work in a clothes store, so…I don't know, you probably don't want to hang around this place anymore now that your shift's over…" Roxas said, shrugging slowly.

"At least give me a chance to actually answer your question instead of answering it for me," Axel said, laughing slightly. "If I don't want to then I'll say so."

Roxas huffed.

"I need new clothes. And I always have a hard time picking stuff out when my parents take me, so they finally just let me have one of their cards and told me to go shopping with my friends if it would help." Roxas pulled the card out of his pocket to illustrate his point. "So…I was wondering if you'd mind…helping me? I can always ask someone else if you don't want to, though, I just thought…you might know about…this stuff."

Axel grinned. "Well, I definitely do know about this stuff, but it's not from working at some shit mall store. Come on, walk with me." He started heading to what he imagined would be the first stop on their journey, unless Roxas had any objections.

Roxas followed him, walking slightly behind. Axel tried to slow down for him a little, but that didn't seem to help, the kid resolutely staying a step behind him. Oh, well.

"What kind of clothes are you looking for?" he asked.

Roxas stared blankly ahead. Then, at length, he shrugged, with something of a guilty expression on his face.

"Well, alright," went Axel. A different strategy, then. "I think we can at least narrow it down a little bit. Why do you need to go clothes shopping so badly right now? Do you need seasonally appropriate clothes? Event-appropriate clothes? Something else?"

Roxas thought about his question for a moment. "A lot of my clothes have holes in them," he said. He looked over his arms for a moment, and then lifted up the one closest to Axel, pointing out the hole in the armpit. Yeah, that was definitely worn out. "And my parents don't like me wearing clothes like this when we go out in public, but if they didn't let me wear this then I kind of wouldn't have anything to wear. So…yeah. That's why…desperate measures."

Axel laughed. Right. Well, at least his family apparently had the means to replace all of it.

"Alright. So you really do need a lot of different things then," said Axel.

"Yeah…"

"Do you have any particular stores you like?"

"Not really."

Axel barely kept himself from sighing dramatically, deciding that that might be a little discouraging. It wasn't like this was some huge burden Roxas was asking him to shoulder or anything. Axel was actually probably going to enjoy this.

"Well, I vote this is our first stop," Axel said, pointing to the department store in front of them. "That work?"

"Oh. Yeah."

Axel gestured for Roxas to lead the way, and he did, looking around like a small child in a hardware store. That is, like he had no idea what he was supposed to be looking for, or why he was there, and was slightly worried that something there might seriously maim him. Axel stepped up and placed what he hoped was a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Okay," he said. "Here's the plan of action. You go around picking up absolutely everything that remotely interests you, and then we sort through the actual reasonable options and sizing variations once you get to the dressing room. Sound good?"

"Yeah," said Roxas, sounding a little bit more hopeful. "I think I can do that."

"Alright. Be free, then. And remember, the more things we have the better."

Roxas nodded dutifully, and then ventured into the forest of clothes racks.

Axel followed behind, staying silent since Roxas didn't seem to be willing to initiate any sort of conversation. He was very focused on the task of picking out clothes, which, well, that was what they were there for.

Once they had combed through almost every "men's" section that had clothes that would fit Roxas, Axel had been tasked with carrying a mere six articles of clothing, while Roxas had a few more in his hands. Jeez, no wonder he had trouble buying things. They'd gone through almost half the store and this is all he was interested in?

"Do you want to check the other half?" Axel suggested. Roxas looked around, apparently wondering what this 'other half' was.

"…you mean the women's section?" he asked, incredulously.

"Well, yeah, I guess," said Axel, frowning. "The 'women's' section," he repeated, using his free hand to put half a set of air quotes around the word "women's." "Contrary to popular belief, clothes don't actually have genders. They're just separated by style and fit and size and things like that, and some of them have pictures of girls above them and some have pictures of boys. I mean, I usually have to shop in this so-called 'women's section,' but…well…" Axel flushed. His tirade had gone a little farther than he'd intended it to. "You know. I'm shaped a little funny. But…anyways, it's your choice."

Roxas nodded, slowly. "I think," he said, "I'll stay over here for now."

"Alright," said Axel. "Well, you should probably try these things on, then," he said, handing over the layers of fabric he had slung over his arm. "Should I hang around the dressing room or no?"

"Ah, no," said Roxas. "I think I'll be okay."

"Text me when you're finished, then," said Axel, and then twiddled his fingers and went off to hang out in the section of the store that had stuff that might actually fit him.

* * *

><p>Roxas ended up getting one (one!) thing from that entire store, but their system at least seemed to be working out. If he bought one (<em>one<em>) thing from every clothes store in the mall, then he'd have a semi-decent selection, wouldn't he?

Well, theoretically. They hopped around to about half the clothing stores in the mall (Roxas, unfortunately, still taking the labels "men" and "women's" to heart, which made things a little bit more difficult considering most clothing stores' target audience) and Axel ended up appreciating more things than Roxas did, even putting on a spectacular show of pretending he actually had money to spend on these sorts of things ("Roxas, could you hold my stuff while I try this on?" "Uh, sure, yeah…"), though not quite to the point of actually spending money he didn't have. He'd learned his lesson by now.

By the end of their little escapade, Roxas was eight articles of clothing richer, and Axel had splurged on a shirt that was on sale for $15, so overall, not a bad haul. In Axel's opinion, at least.

"Think we did okay?" he asked, sitting next to Roxas on a mall bench as Roxas texted his parents to pick him up—_god_, Axel was hanging out _with a child_.

"Better than I usually do, I guess," he answered, looking through a few of the bags at his feet and shrugging. "I probably don't have enough clothes to avoid wearing my holey stuff altogether, but…well. There are other days."

"That's the spirit," Axel said, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling.

"Um," went Roxas. "Thanks. For helping me out."

"Yeah, anytime," said Axel. "Really. I had fun."

Roxas smiled at his shoes.

"Yeah," he said. "Me, too."

* * *

><p>A few hours later, Roxas was laying in his bed, phone laying next to his pillow as he tried to get to sleep at a reasonable time—which, inevitably, meant he would be staying up for at least two more hours, tossing around and trying to get his brain to calm down for long enough to let him sleep.<p>

His phone buzzed, and he recognized it as the specific pattern he'd set for Axel.

(Not that Axel, was, in this case at least, anyone _particularly_ special. Roxas only frequently texted about six people, and they all had different vibration patterns. Really, they did. Honestly.)

But, he tried to ignore it. He felt sleep coming on, he swore.

His phone buzzed again. Then, three more times, fairly close to each other. Roxas felt a slight twinge of annoyance. _Fine_, he thought to himself. He rolled over and picked up his phone, squinting at the screen as he tried to read the notifications.

"Roxas, do you have my wallet?" was the first text.

Then, "Please answer this if you're awake it's important."

"One more try."

"Ok well please answer this ASAP."

Roxas's annoyance was quickly replaced with confusion and not a small amount of worry as he read through them.

"I don't know, I'll check," he texted back, and got out of bed to switch on his light and search for it, squinting for a moment as his eyes adjusted. If he had it, it would either be in the pants he was wearing or the jacket, so…

He looked around, trying to locate them in the mess on his floor. Ah, there are the pants.

His phone buzzed.

"DO NOT LOOK INSIDE OF IT"

Roxas blinked at the urgency of that.

"Ok" he texted back, and checked his pants pockets. No, not there.

Ah, his phone again.

"I'm not saying that you're lying but I'm really serious about this please promise me you won't check inside of it."

Roxas was beginning to get worried about the contents of this wallet. But, if it was that important…

"Cross my heart," he texted. "I promise I won't look inside."

He picked up his jacket, and—ah, yeah, there was definitely something in the pocket. He stuck his hand inside, and took care to pull the item out shut. Yep, that sure was a wallet he'd only seen once before.

He looked at his phone to see the message "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Roxas replied: "I found it. Do you want to come get it?"

Axel: "Ok good. No, it can wait."

"Thank you. Goodnight."

"Sweet dreams!"

Roxas felt like he would be touched by these messages if he weren't so confused. All he could do was text "Goodnight" back and get back in bed.

What could possibly be in a wallet that was so bad?

* * *

><p>Axel didn't text him for a few days. Roxas started to get worried. Had he done something wrong? Was this wallet thing really that big of a deal?<p>

He'd tried to text Axel a few times, but kept second-guessing himself and ending up enabling another dozen or so hours of wondering whether Axel was upset at him or not. He supposed the easiest thing to do would be to just ask him, but for some reason that didn't seem like a distinct possibility.

Fuck. Why was this so hard?

But an opportunity soon presented itself, and he managed to take it before chickening out.

"hey Axel. My family's out on a thing so if you want to stop by and get your wallet…"

He sent his message with a feeling akin to jumping off a cliff and hoping someone will catch you. A very small cliff, admittedly, but he wished he wasn't so freaked out about this.

The reply was, "Oh yeah haha, I should probably get that huh"

…had he just forgotten? Is _that_ why he hadn't mentioned it at all?

Had he been driving around without his license?

Roxas sighed, rubbing his forehead. He couldn't believe he'd been worrying about this for the past, like, week or something.

"we could also hang out or something if you want," he added.

Axel: "sure sounds good."

"I can be there in about half an hour. That work?"

Roxas: "yeah I'm not going anywhere"

"don't get pulled over"

Axel: "don't worry about it"

"im a master at outrunning cops"

Roxas: "?"

Axel: "jk jk"

Roxas frowned at his phone. Even if it was a joke, Roxas had a feeling that it wasn't entirely untrue. Axel seemed like that kind of guy. That haircut…

Oh, well. He should probably stop worrying. Axel could take care of himself.

A few minutes later, Axel texted him, "wait I probably need your address if I want to get to your house," but other than that, Roxas had time to waste while Axel made his way—hopefully, at a reasonable speed—over to his house.

He looked around his room.

He probably wouldn't be letting Axel in there, but…

Well, it was always good to make sure.

* * *

><p>Twenty minutes later, Roxas had finished his most intense cleaning spree ever, which wasn't really that impressive considering his frequency of intense cleaning sprees was very, very low. But in just a third of an hour, he had managed to rid his entire floor of clothes and clean off almost every surface in his room, which admittedly did require a lot of stuffing things ungracefully into his dresser and some creative stacking of things under his bed and closet, but once he pulled his comforter over a little and wedged his doors and drawers shut, his methods were nearly unnoticeable.<p>

He had even moved on to picking up some stray things in the living room when the doorbell rung like, seven times in very quick succession. He ran over and opened it before anymore buttons could be pushed.

"Hey," said Axel.

"Hi," said Roxas.

"I assume this is the right house, then."

"Well…I sure hope so."

Axel laughed, and stepped inside, looking around. Roxas shut the door and watched him warily. The house wasn't exactly clean, even after Roxas's efforts—it was pretty impossible when you have a bunch of teenage boys living there.

Well, two, Roxas supposed. But that was enough.

"This is a pretty nice place," Axel said. Roxas looked up at him, surprised.

"Really?" he said. "I mean, I guess." Maybe it was nice. Roxas had a hard time thinking that when he had a very detailed memory of every single stain on the couch, hole in the wall, and crack where bugs liked to crawl in when it got too cold outside for them to live comfortably.

But other than that. Well, it certainly wasn't a bad house. It had all the house things, like central heating and running water. So it wasn't so bad. Maybe.

Axel started wandering off in some direction, and Roxas trailed after him to make sure he didn't get into anything he wasn't supposed to.

"What's down there?" Axel asked, pointing down a hallway.

"Um," Roxas went, leaning over to see where he was pointing. "That's my parents' bedroom and a guest bedroom, and the door to the garage."

Axel "hmmm"ed, and then crossed the living room again to peer down the other hallway. "And this?" he asked.

"That's…my siblings' bedrooms, and mine."

"Oh? Which one's yours?"

Roxas raised a hand to point, but stopped himself. "Well, you're not allowed to go in," he said. Why had he cleaned it, then? Oh, well. He felt like it'd be too…weird, for some reason.

"Aw, really?" said Axel, pouting. "Well, okay…"

Axel gave one more look around, and then sat himself down on one of the couches, leaning back and looking very much at home.

"So, how many siblings do you have?" he asked.

Roxas blinked. He wasn't sure entirely sure what was going on here—and Axel looked really weird just lounging in his house, too. His firetruck-red hair didn't really mesh with the puke-green couches they'd had since the 90's.

There was one thing he knew he needed to do, though.

"Uh, hold on. I need to…before I forget…"

Roxas went to his room, grabbed Axel's wallet (keeping very careful to make sure it didn't fall open accidentally or some horrible sitcom plot event like that) and went back to the living room. "Here," he said, holding it out for his friend to take.

Axel did, and looked over it. He smiled, but it looked like a nervous one.

"Sorry for asking, but, did you look in it?"

"No," said Roxas. "I promised, didn't I?" he smiled, and sat down next to Axel, sinking into the couch cushion.

"Yeah, I guess you did," said Axel, sticking the wallet in one of the many pockets he had at the time. "Thanks."

"Sure. Um…you were saying?"

Axel gave him a blank stare for a moment, but then realization came.

"Right. Your siblings. This is a pretty big house, so…"

"Oh, yeah. I have four brothers, two of them are—wait, no." He frowned, shaking his head. "Three brothers and a sister, sorry. Um. Yeah, the two oldest are in college, so they aren't here much. Then there's me and Sora, and our little, um, sister is Xion. Yeah. She's…"

Roxas flushed. He didn't know what the right words were for this. "I don't really know how I'm supposed to say this. She used to be my brother, I guess, but…"

"Oh!" went Axel, sitting up straighter. "Is she transgender?"

"Yeah, that's the word," said Roxas, nodding. "She only figured it out, or, she only told me, pretty recently but. I'm doing my best, but, you know…"

"It sounds like you're being pretty respectful," Axel said, sagely. "So just keep doing that and it'll be fine."

"Yeah…"

Roxas stared at the coffee table in front of them. This stuff was kind of weird for him to wrap his head around, but he'd do anything to make Xion happy.

"Oh, but," he said, looking back at Axel again, "Make sure you don't mention it to my parents, if you ever end up talking to them. She said it's okay to tell our friends and stuff but she wants to talk to them about it and I don't know when she's going to do that so. Uh, just in case."

"Sure, sure," said Axel. "Speaking of, where are they now? You have the house to yourself for the weekend?"

"Yeah. They all went camping," said Roxas. "They used to make me go too, but a few years ago I…"

He flushed, remembering what a disaster that trip had been. On second thought, maybe he wouldn't tell Axel about that.

"It, it wasn't pretty," he settled on. "So now I get to stay home."

"And play video games?"

"Ah, how'd you know," Roxas said, joking. "Um…do you wanna play some?"

Axel shrugged.

"Why not?"

* * *

><p>Roxas really didn't understand how Axel was so bad at video games. Like, okay, he obviously didn't play very many but…it wasn't that hard to pick up, was it? You just press some buttons and the character on screen does stuff. Do a lot of stuff and you win. Right?<p>

Then again, people did always complain about how good Roxas was at it. He didn't really think he was, but if that many people all agreed…

"You are scary good at this," Axel said, frowning as his character flew off the screen for what was probably the 50th time. Roxas was kind of surprised Axel had put up with him for this long. Most people quit after an hour or so. "Either that or I'm just _really_ bad."

Roxas laughed, somewhat nervously. He wished he could offer some consolation, but he wasn't entirely which one it was, either.

"Do you want to do something else?" he asked, trying to disguise his reluctance. He hardly ever got anyone to play against these days.

"Psh, you think you can break me that easily?" Axel said, grinning and going through the character select screen again. "Come on. I bet I can beat you next time."

Roxas laughed, and set up the handicap again. Axel did nearly beat him a few dozen rounds ago, by a stroke of what was probably pure luck, but who knows, maybe he had a fast learning curve.

* * *

><p>Axel did not, in fact, have a fast learning curve, and was completely full of shit. He couldn't beat Roxas 'next time,' nor the time after that, and likely would not be able to beat Roxas at any point in the future unless he put some serious training in.<p>

Roxas gave him the benefit of the doubt.

But a few rounds later, it seemed like Axel had completely given up. He was hardly even attacking anymore, and his actions seemed really uncoordinated.

Roxas knocked him off the map again, and then looked over at him. He wasn't entirely sure what he was planning on saying, but after seeing Axel's face, those words definitely changed.

"Woah," went Roxas, "Are you okay?"

Axel's frown lifted suddenly, but his face was still way paler than it usually was.

"I'm fine," he said, with a completely unconvincing smile.

Roxas stared at him.

"Okay," Axel said, "No, I'm not."

He set the controller down very carefully, and then proceeded to fold himself over, touching his forehead to the floor and groaning. Which, all things aside, was a pretty impressive show of flexibility.

"Uh," went Roxas, staring wide-eyed. "Did—are you—are you in pain? Do you need to go to the hospital?"

Axel, for some reason, laughed at this, though it sounded as strained as anything.

"Yes to the first, no to the second," he said, to the floor. "Do you have any painkillers?"

"Uh, yeah, I'll—yeah," Roxas said, and then jumped up and ran to his bathroom, sliding the mirror over to look at the bottles of pills in the cabinet. There were about a billion different kinds of painkillers, so he just grabbed everything that didn't have a prescription label on it and ran back to the living room.

"Here," he said, sitting down next to Axel and holding the bottles near his face. Axel looked over, just turning his head towards him and setting it back down on the floor. He grabbed the bottle with the blue pills in it.

"Water?" he asked.

"Right," Roxas said, getting up and grabbing a bottle of water from the kitchen. He brought it to Axel, setting it on the floor next to him.

Axel laid there for a moment, took a deep breath, and then sat up, slowly. He took two pills, and sighed.

"Sorry," he said, sheepish smile still more of a pained grimace than anything. "I'll be okay. Promise."

"What's wrong?" Roxas asked. "Does this happen a lot?"

Axel thought about it for a moment, then just smiled, and put a finger over his lips in a "shh" gesture. Then he pulled out his phone before Roxas had time to ask any more questions.

"Wow, it got pretty late," he said.

Roxas looked at the clock on their sound system. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, I guess. Do you need to be getting home?"

Axel shrugged, putting his phone away. "Probably," he said. "Unless you want me to spend the night."

"Will you—" Roxas started, words coming out of his mouth before he fully formulated a thought. "I mean, if you, you can if you want, I wouldn't…mind…"

Axel raised an eyebrow at him, evidently amused. It seemed like whatever had happened to him was…passing, at least. "I'm not actually technically supposed to drive at night," he said. "I have…well, vision problems, of a sort. So I figure it'd probably be a good idea."

Vision problems? Axel didn't wear glasses, though, did he? Or contacts—Roxas was pretty sure he didn't wear contacts either. He didn't see any, at least.

"I guess you should stay, then," Roxas said, looking around. "I'll get some blankets out of the closet and…or…" He frowned, an image coming to mind. "Um. I could set you up on the couch, but…I don't know. My family's not supposed to be back until Sunday but…if they come back early for some reason and see you on the couch…"

Axel laughed. "Yeah, that might be a little hard to explain."

_Well, Sora would know exactly who you were_, Roxas thought, trying not to think about the kinds of things his brother would tease him about in that situation.

"So you could take my bed, I guess," Roxas said. "And I'll just sleep on the floor…"

"Nah, I'll take the floor," Axel said, getting up (a little haltingly—was he still in pain?) and looking around. "I've slept in worse spaces. Need help with the blankets or anything?"

"Oh, sure," went Roxas, taking a moment to turn the TV off (the game system could stay on, it wouldn't really hurt anything) before getting up and going to one of the hall closets. Axel trailed behind.

Roxas opened it slowly, mindful of a possible blanket avalanche. When no such disaster happened, he opened it all the way and gestured to the pile of bedding. "Want anything in particular?" he asked, laughing slightly at the sheer amount of blankets they'd somehow acquired over the years. Roxas had been using the same ones for at least six years now, so he wasn't sure where they'd all come from…

Axel just picked the thing off the top of the pile and draped it over his arm. "Will you tell me which one is your room this time?"

Roxas grabbed a few pillows. "Yeah, I _guess_," he sighed, jokingly. "Follow me."

He went to his room, and nudged the door open with his foot. None of his lights were on, and it had gotten dark since he'd cleaned. That was…probably good. Somehow he didn't want Axel to be able to examine his room with much clarity.

He walked inside, and Axel stayed in the doorway, blinking in the low light. And—oh, god dammit.

"Are those stars?" he asked, looking up at Roxas's ceiling. Roxas huffed.

"Sora—er, my brother put them up there when we shared this room, and I…just never took them down, so…" he dropped the pillows on the floor, and turned on a lamp, which was the lowest level of illumination possible without it being completely dark in there. Axel didn't need to see the details of this mess, even if Roxas had tidied up quite a bit.

Axel dropped the blanket on the floor next to where Roxas had put the pillows. "Could you point me to the bathroom?" he asked. Roxas went over to his doorway and pointed down the hall.

"It's the only one with the door open," he said.

"Thanks," Axel said, and went to go visit it.

Roxas turned around and looked at his room.

Roxas flushed.

This was weird. This was _really_ weird, and Roxas couldn't really say it wasn't a bad weird, either. He tried to get his brain to shut up while he laid the blanket out on the floor and arranged the pillows in a halfway reasonable way. Axel would probably move them, anyways.

He sat on his bed, and looked around. He usually didn't have friends over in his room…he either stayed at their houses (less hectic) or he had a few over and they all camped out in the living room playing video games and consuming dangerous amounts of caffeine and cheesy snacks until the early hours of the morning.

Besides, Axel wasn't really like the rest of his friends.

For one, Axel was kind of a mystery. Roxas didn't really know what he was interested in. He tended to spend more time listening to Roxas talk endlessly about video game mechanics, and more often than not ended his own potential sharing time with a "ah, but you probably don't care about that," and changed the subject.

As much as Roxas appreciated someone who was willing to listen to him, it felt pretty one-sided after a certain point, and Roxas's experience with one-sidedness was, more often than not, people soon getting annoyed at him and snapping at him to shut up.

He frowned at the floor. He hoped Axel never did that. He wasn't sure if he could take it.

Roxas settled into bed, setting his pillows up to sit up on and pulling his covers over himself. He wasn't really that tired.

Not very long later, Axel returned, face clean of the make-up sort stuff he usually wore. It, well, it was make-up, but Roxas felt kind of weird calling it that. Axel's eyes looked a lot different without the red lining. He had also acquired another pillow, and was holding it against his chest.

"Can I turn this off?" he asked, pointing at the lamp. Roxas nodded, so he switched it off, and then got settled into his little floor bed, fabric shuffling around for a short bit.

"Are you tired?" Roxas asked.

"Hmm," went Axel. "A little. Mostly I just want to sleep this off."

'This?' Oh, right.

"Oh." Roxas wasn't really sure what to say. "You're…gonna be okay, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah," went Axel, "I promise."

"If you say so," Roxas said, frowning. "Goodnight, I guess."

"Goodnight," said Axel. "Sweet dreams."

Roxas blushed, and was glad Axel's face was currently buried in a pillow.

"You too," he muttered, and pulled his blanket up over his head.

* * *

><p>Axel woke up again at god-knows-when in the morning, and squinted his eyes against the blue glow emanating from somewhere to his right. Once his eyes woke up a little bit, he rolled over to see Roxas, sitting up in his bed with his eyes glued to another one of his hand-held video game things.<p>

He was also wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled up over a pair of headphones, with the pull strings for his hood stuck in between his teeth.

Axel stared at him. That was definitely a familiar wardrobe choice.

"You're still awake?" he asked, his voice hoarse from sleep. But he didn't get a response. Right, headphones.

He tossed one of his pillows vaguely at Roxas's bed, and Roxas jumped, startled at the movement.

He moved his headphones down around his neck, and spat the drawstrings out, apparently trying to play it off.

"You're awake," he said, eloquently.

"I am," said Axel, sitting up, keeping the blanket around his shoulders. "So are you. Have you even slept yet?"

"Um," went Roxas, "No."

"What time is it?"

Roxas pressed a button on his console.

"About four," he said.

Axel sighed. "Do you usually stay up this late?"

"Yeah," said Roxas. "Or, well…until one or two, usually, on school days when I'm actually trying to sleep…um. How are you feeling?"

Axel stared at him. How was he feeling? He was feeling fine. A little sleepy, but—oh. Right. That.

"I feel better," Axel said. For now, at least. "And I'm still going to be okay."

"That's good."

"Yeah. I'd kind of like if you stopped asking, too, it's kind of wigging me out here."

Roxas frowned, and looked away from him.

"Sorry," he said. "I'll stop."

"Thanks," Axel said.

Then he yawned, and stretched his arms out under the blanket. Was it just him, or was it kind of cold in here? Maybe Roxas's family was the type who always kept the thermostat down ridiculously low.

"Were you chewing on your sweater?" he asked, once he got settled under his blanket again.

Roxas continued not looking at him. "Yeah, I know," he said, pouting and pressing a few buttons on his game.

"You know?" asked Axel. "Know what?"

"I shouldn't be doing that," Roxas said.

Axel frowned. Who had put him in that state of mind? It would have made the hair on the back of Axel's neck stand up if they weren't already.

"That's not what I was going to say," he said. "Who told you you shouldn't be doing that?" And is it someone I can punch?

"My mom, mostly," Roxas said. Oh, so no punching, then. "But usually only when I do it in public, she doesn't mind so much when we're at home now."

"I think you should be able to do it whenever you want to," Axel said, tone taking perhaps a little too much of a defensive turn.

Roxas finally looked back at him.

"It's really not that big of a deal," he said. "I can go without chewing on my clothes for a few hours."

"Yeah, but," Axel started, frowning. "You shouldn't _have_ to."

Axel was sort of at a shortage of words here. There were only so many things he could come up with when his brain wasn't working at full capacity, and he wasn't entirely sure how he should be phrasing things when talking to Roxas. After all, Axel didn't really know how far this whole 'thing' went. Though…after talking to the kid for a while, he had gotten a pretty good idea.

But still, it wasn't really his place to say.

"I mean, I chew on my hair when I'm trying to focus. That's basically the only reason I keep it this long," he said. That wasn't entirely true, but it would suffice. "And I also, um…hold on."

He fumbled around on the dark floor, looking for his jacket. Once discovered, he dug through the pockets, and took out a few choice objects. Then he scooted over to Roxas's bed, abandoning his blanket.

"Here's some of the stuff I keep to fidget with," he said, placing them out on Roxas's blanket. "I mean, you probably don't care, but…I guess I'm telling you anyways." It was that point in the middle of the night, you know? Besides, it had been so long since Axel got to share these with someone else. He was kind of excited, actually.

"This used to be full of mints, but I kept it because I like the way it clicks when you open it. I'll probably have to get a new one once it gets worn down, but…"

Roxas picked up the box and clicked it open and shut a few times.

"This is…a rock, I guess. I just like how heavy it is."

Roxas picked up the rock, thing, and held it in his hand.

"I just like running my nails over this thing." Axel placed a keychain on the blanket. It had some sort of column attached to it, that was weaved out of plastic string things. He was pretty sure he'd bought it off a girl scout.

Roxas picked up the keychain and ran a fingernail over the plastic part. He wasn't really doing it right, but it Axel didn't mind too much.

"I like keychains, too," Roxas said. "I keep a lot of them…"

"Really?" Axel asked, grinning. "Any particular reason?"

"I dunno. I just like…" he put the keyring part over his finger, and tugged on it. Then he shrugged, and put it down with the rest of the stuff.

"I do care, by the way," he said.

"Hm?" went Axel.

"I care. You always say stuff like, 'you probably don't care,' but I always care about what you have to say."

Axel stared at him, unexpected emotions welling up in his chest.

He thought that, probably, this wasn't the right time to start crying.

"Oh," he said, instead of that. "I…thanks."

Roxas nodded. "Well, I figure it's only fair, considering how much stuff I always make you listen to…"

"You don't make me," Axel said, laughing. "I like listening to you talk about stuff."

"So what makes you think I don't like listening to you?" Roxas said, frowning.

Axel looked back at the blanket, rubbing the back of his neck. "I guess you got me there," he said, though not entirely truthfully. He knew _exactly_ why he didn't think people would be interested. Not Roxas in particular, of course, just…people.

But that wasn't really something Axel wanted to reveal at that point in time. That was like…level 50 friendship level. They were probably at about a 20.

Axel gathered up the things he'd littered over the blanket, and stuck them back in his pockets.

"So…you just carry this around to fidget with?" Roxas asked, slowly, as if he wasn't entirely sure what words to use in this situation.

"Yeah," said Axel. "It helps to have something to mess with when I get stressed out or…well, bored, mostly. I also—well…" he frowned. Maybe it wasn't time to reveal that, either.

"You also what?" Roxas asked, purposefully.

Well, how could Axel say no to that?

"It's kind of personal," he said.

"Oh," went Roxas, frowning. "Well…I guess you don't have to…"

"Well," went Axel, "It's not that I don't trust you, I just…well, I don't want you to freak out or anything. Will you freak out if I tell you?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Roxas said, more amused than exasperated. "I'll try not to. You don't kill people, right?"

Axel laughed. "No," he said. "I don't kill people."

"It can't be that bad, then, right?"

It definitely could. But Axel decided to take this leap of faith. Nothing could would come from keeping secrets, and he'd much rather reveal this willingly than have Roxas stumble upon it later.

He tugged up one of his sleeves, and laid his arm out on the bed for Roxas to see. He was thankful for the low light, because it concealed most of the damage, but a few dark scabs were still visible, circular, mostly at the top of his forearm.

Axel stared at his arm, seeing Roxas do the same out of his peripheral vision. He wasn't really sure he wanted to know what Roxas's reaction was to it.

"Um," he heard.

Axel took his arm off the bed and pulled his sleeve over it again. He continued staring at the blanket, heart pounding against his chest. He really didn't like showing people these things.

"They're burn scars," he said, fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve.

"You…do that to yourself?"

Axel nodded.

"Most of them are old," he said, semi-truthfully. Most of the ones he had in general were old. Specifically the ones on his arm, maybe not so much.

"Why?" Roxas asked, quietly.

Axel shifted, leaning his head against the bed and staring at the wall. Why? Well, wasn't that a complicated question.

"It's kind of a long story," he said, somehow smiling at the phrasing. At his flippancy. "Part of it is…the same as the keychains. I just get bored and want to feel something, and before I know it I just…"

He shrugged, turning and pressing his forehead into the mattress, trying not to think about the feeling, trying not to think about what Roxas was going to say next, his head trying to provide lines like _That's so stupid, Why don't you just stop?_

"I'm…sorry," is what he really did say. "I don't really know what to say."

Axel nodded, sort of.

"It's alright," he said. "I've heard about everything by this point anyways."

Silence hung in the air for a few long moments.

"You can always talk to me about it, if you want," Roxas said. "I might not know what to say, but…I can listen."

Axel looked up at him, and sighed.

He reached up and pat Roxas's knee, in some attempt at a comforting gesture. It was kind of awkward from his position, but he was pretty sure the sentiment would come through.

"Thanks," he said. Then, "You should probably get some sleep."

Roxas huffed, the mood in the room suddenly changing.

"I'm almost to the end of this chapter, though," he said, pouting. Axel had never heard video games referred to with "chapters," but he was pretty sure he understood what Roxas was talking about.

"Then you can look forward to playing it in the morning," he responded, grinning.

"Orrrr…" went Roxas, shrugging slowly.

Axel rolled his eyes.

"Let's make a deal," he said. "If you're sleeping when I wake up, then I'll make you breakfast."

Roxas frowned at him, squinting suspiciously. "When will you wake up?" he asked.

"Probably in another four hours or so."

"What? Do you usually wake up that early?"

"Trust me, Roxas, with a job like mine, that is sleeping in."

Roxas made a face at that.

"Remind me to never work in retail," he said.

"Do I not do that every single day already?"

Roxas laughed. "Alright," he said. "Fair enough. It's a deal."

"Good," said Axel. "Now go to sleep."

* * *

><p>Axel ended up awake around five hours later, a little bit longer due to the fact he wasn't expecting Roxas's curtains to block out the entire sun. It almost seemed like the middle of the night in there.<p>

He sat up to see Roxas fast asleep, looking more like a steadily rising-and-falling mass of blankets than an actual human being.

Axel stood up and walked over to him, leaning over and examining his face.

He blew on him slightly.

There was no reaction, so either Roxas was really good at playing at sleeping, or he was actually asleep. Either way, Axel supposed he'd keep his side of the bargain.

There was plenty of food in the fridge—Axel supposed there had to be, with this many teenagers in the house—so he had no trouble whipping something up. He sort of regretted not asking Roxas if he had any food peculiarities, but compromised on his lack of knowledge by making an omelet with various additions cooked separately and added on top of it, instead of in the eggs themselves. If Roxas didn't like anything, he could just pick it out.

Axel put the food on a plate and covered it with plastic wrap, before sticking it in the microwave. Then he cleaned everything he'd used, put it away, and went back to check on Roxas.

Still fast asleep. Axel didn't think he'd even moved.

Well, he couldn't just wake him up, could he? The kid had probably only gotten like, two hours of sleep by now, anyways.

He went back into the kitchen and wrote a note instead. "You win. Open for food," it said.

He stuck it on the microwave, made sure he had all of his things (his wallet, especially), and left, bound for home and hopefully avoiding any human contact for the next twelve hours.

He was glad he had spent the night with Roxas, but…he needed some time to recharge.


	4. Chapter 4

Roxas frowned at his sketchpad as if it had personally affronted him. His drawing wasn't horrible, he supposed, but he couldn't seem to get his pencil to do what he wanted it to do. His hands weren't working right, and marks kept coming out darker than he'd intended or not in the right place or—

He huffed, rubbing his eyes. This was giving him a headache.

When he looked back at his paper again, he saw Namine glance at him out of the corner of his eye. He'd told her, at some point previous, not to try and help him unless he actually asked for it (it got kind of annoying when you wanted to figure out how to do something yourself, and people kept trying to tell you how to do it), but he wasn't really sure what to ask for here.

"Okay," he said, sighing, giving in. "Help?"

Namine leaned over, and looked at his drawing. He flushed, sure she thought it was completely horrible.

"Hmm," she went, tilting her head slightly. Then she looked up at the park scene they were sitting in front of, then back at the drawing. "What are you having trouble with?"

If Roxas knew the answer to that, then he probably wouldn't be asking Namine for help. But, there was no point in snapping at her. It wasn't her fault he couldn't get his hands to do what he wanted them to.

"I'm trying to draw these leaves," he said, pointing at a particular area. "I don't know how to get them to look okay, though. I know you're not supposed to draw every single one, but…everything else just looks weird…"

"Ah," Namine went, smiling. "Well, it will look weird until you're done with it, if you're doing something like that."

Roxas looked over at her, and frowned.

"Then how will I know if I'm doing it right? What if I mess up the entire tree?"

She shrugged, sitting back up and turning back to her own drawing.

"Then you pass it off as an artistic liberty," she said, smiling.

Roxas gaped at her.

"I knew it," he said, narrowing his eyes. "You're a fraud."

She laughed, and shoved his arm, gently. He leaned over as if she'd hit a lot harder.

"Hey," she said, tone suddenly changing. Roxas sat up, and raised his eyebrows in question.

"You've gotten a lot better," she said.

He frowned, and looked down at his drawing. As far as he was concerned, it was about as good as anything he'd done all class, which was…well, not that great.

"Have I?"

"Well…" Namine tilted her head again, thinking it over. "You've gotten a lot better at sitting down and working. A few months ago you would have probably gotten frustrated and quit by now. And working on something you're only a little bit good at is the first step to getting really good at it."

Roxas continued staring at his drawing, thinking over what she said. She wasn't entirely wrong, was she. He'd found it a lot easier to keep his emotions from getting out of hand recently—at least in situations where they shouldn't be. Even if he still dreaded doing his homework, he didn't want to stab anything by the end of an assignment.

"Yeah," he said. "I guess you're right."

"I think you've been a lot happier in general, recently," Namine said, calmly, scratching out more shapes on her paper. "I wonder why that is?"

"Huh," went Roxas. "I dunno. Have I?"

Namine laughed behind her hand. Roxas blushed.

"What?" he said, pouting, "What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing," Namine said, smiling politely, effectively ending the conversation.

Roxas huffed, not really as irritated as he was playing on.

Namine was weird sometimes.

* * *

><p>"Hello! Roxas! How are you? How's school? How are your friends? Are you getting enough to eat? Are you sleeping well? [fire emoji x 3]"<p>

Roxas blinked at the sudden influx of questions on his phone screen. Someone was feeling energetic. The next text was, "You may answer one, or some, or all of these questions."

"Hello Axel," he sent back, taking his time to think over everything he'd been asked. Then, "im okay. School is school. My friends are okay I assume. I am currently eating lunch. I am always tired."

Axel: "Good job. Nice response."

"School is school?"

Roxas: "Yes. School is school"

Axel: "What's that mean?"

Roxas: "I mean schools never really good so. School is just school."

Axel: "oh"

"Do you have trouble with it? Is that's why it's never really good?"

Roxas frowned. Axel always asked the wrong types of questions. Or…maybe the right ones. He certainly got to the point of things.

Roxas: "Yeah"

Axel: "Why do you think that is?"

Roxas: "Well im kind of stupid so that's part of it."

It wasn't really the ideal way to describe it, but it fit well enough. He wasn't sure what else to call it when someone could ask him what five plus three was and he'd usually have to stop and think about it.

Axel: "That's an interesting choice of words."

"What do you mean by 'stupid'?"

He blinked. That wasn't what people usually said when Roxas talked about this. It was usually, "You're not stupid," or…well, usually that. Which didn't really help that much when he was legitimately feeling stupid.

Roxas: "I mean it takes me a long time to do assignments and I have trouble thinking I guess?"

"Math doesnt make sense to me. I can never keep up w the readings in english."

"Im only not failing a lot of things because im good at figuring out what the answers are when it's multiple choice so my test grades are ok."

He felt something welling up in his chest, but he tried to ignore it. He thought he was used to this stuff by now, but…it still kind of felt bad.

Axel: "So you're not good at completing assignments. Do you have trouble focusing? Learning the material? Understanding what the teachers are asking of you? Something else? Some of these? None of these? All of the above?"

Roxas stopped, and read over that text a few times.

Roxas: "All of the above."

"Usually I can get what my teachers are saying, except this one teacher"

"like I can understand what words he's saying but they never make sense in my head."

"I guess that sounds kind of weird…"

Axel: "no, I understand exactly what you mean!"

Roxas flushed. Well, that was a first.

Axel, again: "have you looked this stuff up on the internet?"

"like, people who have these problems too."

Roxas: "some of it…? usually I just get google saying I have ADD or st…"

"I've talked to the counselor about it too but nothing she says really helps…"

Axel: "Counselors aren't shit, Roxas. That's your first life lesson from Mr. Axel"

"I'll send you some links to stuff you can get some better information from"

"I mean, if you want. I guess I'm being kind of pushy with this"

"I'm gonna rephrase this: Hey Roxas, do you mind if I send you a few links for you to read over? I know head stuff is a very personal thing so I wouldn't want you to feel like I'm trying to tell you what to think about how your own brain works."

Roxas: "yeah…that's fine"

"Thanks I guess? I'm not sure what you just said haha"

Axel: "in short: I will back off if you want me to."

Roxas: "Okay. I don't want you to back off."

Axel: "Cool. I'll send you some stuff."

Roxas frowned at the conversation. He hadn't really ever had a good experience with people trying to…get him to not do the things he was doing, but so far Axel hadn't pulled the "Have you tried _not_ doing that?" so Roxas supposed he could, at least, keep an open mind.

* * *

><p>Besides, who knows. Maybe this could actually help?<p>

Axel: "So, since I've been over to your house, I feel like it's only fair I invite you over to mine"

"Feel free to decline."

Roxas set his DS down on his bed to answer his messages.

Axel's place…? Well, that could be…interesting. He wasn't really sure what he thought about that.

"Do you live with anyone else?" he sent. That was probably his main concern. He'd kind of gotten the feeling that Axel lived with this Larxene person, and if that was so…

Axel: "Nope. Got this place all to my lonesome."

Roxas blinked. Did he?

Roxas: "Oh. Well okay. Sure that could be fun"

And he'd take any excuse to postpone working on his homework, after all.

Axel: "Do you have homework to do this weekend?"

God damn it.

Roxas: "Not a lot…"

Axel: "Well I can't distract you from your studies."

"Bring it over and I'll try and help you with it."

Roxas laughed to himself. That was the opposite of what he considered fun, but knowing Axel's work ethic, they probably wouldn't be getting much actual work done anyways.

Roxas: "Well, okay. I guess I can spend some time tomorrow, then."

Axel: "Works for me."

Roxas: "Yeah. Send me your address?"

* * *

><p>It turned out that Axel's house—no, apartment, actually—was within reasonable biking distance, so Roxas biked there, wondering all the way about how it possibly took Axel half an hour to get from his apartment to Roxas's house by any means.<p>

Maybe he had to do his hair or something.

Roxas locked his bike onto the convenient bike rack outside of the apartment complex, and looked around. It was…kind of a nice-looking place. Roxas had expected more, average-to-slightly-dilapidated what with how Axel was complaining about his income all the time, but this place didn't look so bad.

He pulled out his phone to make sure he knew which apartment number Axel's was. That would be ground floor, so…

Roxas looked around, and went what he assumed was the right direction. Not that door, not that door…ah.

He looked at his phone again, then back up at the door. This should be the right one, so...

Roxas stared at the door. He should knock. It would be the easiest course of action. Just knock, and…

He huffed, and opened up his messaging app. "I think I'm here," he sent. It would take a little bit longer, but at least he wasn't in danger of knocking on some random person's apartment door.

The door in front of him opened, and behind it was an Axel.

"Hey," said Roxas.

Axel grinned.

"Come in!" he said, opening the door for him. Roxas walked past him, and looked around. "I tried to tidy up a little so it doesn't look quite so much like a hurricane came through. Do you want something to drink?"

"Um, no, thanks," Roxas said, setting his backpack down next to some table, trying to look inconspicuous. Maybe Axel will forget he told Roxas to bring his homework.

It smelled kind of like something was burning.

Roxas remembered Axel's scars, and felt a little sick. It wasn't that, though. It definitely wasn't that.

"This place is…nice," he said. "Do you really live here all alone?"

"Yep," said Axel, shrugging. "I don't like having people around all the time. They get hard to deal with. Anyways, did you bring your homework?"

Roxas huffed. "Yeah," he said. "I was hoping you forgot."

"Nope," went Axel. "I have a memory like…whatever animal it's supposed to be. Come on, let's knock some of this out."

* * *

><p>Homework was a lot easier when Axel was around. Or, at least, it was a lot easier to deal with <em>having<em> homework—they didn't really get all that much done. For one, as Axel had not actually finished high school, as he had told Roxas many times before, so the properties of Algebra II were a little bit over his spiny head.

Weirdly enough, though, Roxas having to dig out his textbook and explain to Axel what factoring meant actually helped him get through a few of the problems. The review was nice, and it was relieving to finally not be the only one who was completely perplexed by the material.

So it probably would have worked out pretty well, if either of them could manage to stay focused for more than about five minutes at a time. Every three things would remind one of them of some _incredibly interesting story_ that they just _had to mention right then and there_, which would lead to another anecdote, then another, then perhaps a discussion about philosophical ideas or something less scholarly, and on and on until one of them inevitably pulled the, "oh, shit, we were working on something," and they pulled themselves back together for a few minutes—at which point, of course, the cycle started all over again.

A few hours later, they had managed to get through about half of Roxas's relatively short math assignment. However, Roxas actually felt pretty confident about the work he'd done, and he'd basically done it all by himself, too. Axel had been helpful, but it's not like he could have provided any actual answers even if he'd wanted to.

"This…actually works pretty well," Roxas said, staring at the scrawl all over his scratch paper. He wasn't entirely sure what half of it meant by that point, but it looked pretty impressive.

"Really?" went Axel. "I feel like all I've done is distract you."

"Well, yeah, but somehow I still actually got stuff done, which is more than I can usually say."

Axel sat back looking over their accomplishments. "Weird," he said. "Well…do you wanna keep going?"

Roxas laughed, and shut his book. "Absolutely not," he said. "I think that's about all the math I can take for the day."

"Okay, good," said Axel, "Because I don't know how much more I could take, either."

Roxas grinned, and put his homework back in his backpack, zipping it up and kicking it under the table. Out of sight, out of mind.

"Sooo," went Axel, glancing around like he was oh-so-interested at the interior of his own apartment. "Are you hungry?"

Roxas blinked at him. "I could eat," he said. He could always eat.

Axel stood up. "I'll make dinner, then," he said. "Do you like spaghetti?"

"Um," went Roxas. Well, at least Axel wasn't trying to ask him what he wanted. "Yeah, sure."

"Perfect."

Before Roxas could say anything else, like maybe offering to help, or what he was supposed to do in the meanwhile, Axel had already disappeared into the kitchen.

"Okay," said Roxas, quietly, to himself.

He looked around the room.

Then he got up and went into the kitchen, to see Axel skillfully combining a lot of things into a single pot. Apparently he was actuallycooking, and not just heating up a bunch of things in jars.

Cool.

"That breakfast you made was pretty good, by the way," Roxas said, sitting himself at Axel's kitchen counter. There was a haphazard stack of papers on one corner of it. Roxas picked up one of them and looked it over. What was this? Well, it didn't look like anything interesting.

"Oh, thanks," Axel said, glancing at him. "I wasn't sure if you had any…well, if there was anything you didn't like eating, so I kind of had to wing it. It was okay?"

"Yeah, definitely," Roxas said, setting the paper on the counter and picking up the next. Oh, this one was some sort of electricity bill. Did Axel have to pay for electricity here? Brutal.

Axel turned back to the pot full of what Roxas had figured out was tomato sauce. It smelled excellent.

The next thing in the pile was an ID card. Roxas saw the back of it, with a little heart on it. It also had a hole punched in it, so it must have been an old one.

He picked it up and turned it over. The picture looked unfamiliar. Someone with a big mane of black hair, which was haphazardly pulled back to keep out of their face for the picture. They looked kind of sick, actually. Like they hadn't eaten for a while, and…

Wait, were those tattoos on their face?

Tattoos that looked suspiciously like…

Was this _Axel_?

Roxas looked at the rest of the ID card. The name listed wasn't Axel, but "LEA." Was that like "Lee?" Maybe 'Axel' was a nickname, or…

Roxas stared at the bottom of the ID card.

"Sex: F"

He blinked a few times. That was definitely the letter F. The picture and name bounced around in his head along with this information.

Before he could connect these three things together with much sense to them, the ID card was snatched out of his hand.

He looked up, to see Axel staring at him, jaw set into a carefully neutral expression.

Oh. _Oh_.

"I think you should leave," he said.

Roxas was—not nervous. Roxas was scared.

"I-I'm sorry," he said, weakly. "I didn't mean to, I…"

"Roxas," Axel said, voice strained, forced to keep quiet. "I would like you. To leave."

Roxas nodded, barely, and then nodded again, got up from the counter, grabbed his things, and left.

* * *

><p>Axel sat on his kitchen floor, knees to his chest and face in his hands, rocking himself back and forth, memories he didn't want to remember rising to his head in waves as he tried to force them down, away again. He tried to keep his breathing steady as his lungs wanted to gasp for air. Roxas wasn't like them. Roxas wasn't like everyone else. Axel was safe.<p>

He was _safe._

* * *

><p><em>I'm sorry…I didn't mean to look…<em>

_You're still Axel_

_That's all. You're still just Axel to me._

_You can be mad if you need to but I just want you to know that this doesn't change anything_

_It doesn't change how I think of you. Maybe it changed how you think of me. That's okay…_

_I'll stop texting you for now but I'll be here if you want to talk again…_

* * *

><p>Axel peeked out from under his comforter and stared at his phone, lying silently on his bedside table.<p>

He hadn't had it on for the past three days. He couldn't talk to anyone. No—he didn't _want_ to talk to anyone. He knew what kind of things he would say if he did, and he'd kind of like to keep the friends he had, thanks.

Even Roxas.

Yes, he definitely wanted to keep Roxas. No matter how much his opinion tried to turn itself around over the past few days. He still wanted Roxas around.

He reached out and grabbed his phone, and then ducked back under the covers.

He switched it on, and laid it on his bed, waiting for it to boot back up.

He waited for a moment once the screen came on.

Then it vibrated for about a minute straight.

Oops.

Once it stopped—and he waited for a little bit to make sure it had—he picked it up and went to read his messages. There were a few from Roxas, but he saved them for last. The majority of them were from Larxene, such as "Are you skipping work today?" and "I told the manager you were sick, you better not make me regret this" "Where are you?" "Answer your goddamn phone before I kick your door down."

There were also a few messages from other friends, some who hardly even texted him in the first place, so that was a little suspicious—until he saw the one from Demyx, which said "Larxene made me send this to check up on you please be alive or shell kill me," which solved that particular mystery.

He just texted back, "im alive," and made a mental note to respond to the rest later.

Which he wouldn't, of course, he would just wait until Demyx told everyone and the inevitable rush of messages came in, which he would then respond to. That was more efficient.

Then, the only ones left were from Roxas.

Axel took a deep breath, and then opened the thread, scrolling to the top and reading through all of them slowly.

He wasn't mad.

Axel sighed, and put a hand over his eyes. If he had had it in him, he might have cried in relief.

"would you mind calling me?" he sent. He stared at the screen for moment.

It didn't look like Roxas was going to be replying immediately, so he pulled up his twitter feed and started scrolling through three days' worth of missed content.

He didn't actually care about most of it, but he felt a sense of duty to it. Maybe he should unfollow some of these people…

A notification popped up on the top of his screen. "sure give me 15 minutes."

Axel frowned, and checked the time. Roxas was probably at school. He had half a mind to tell Roxas not to bother, to wait until he went home, but…

No. He wanted to talk to him now. And if Roxas didn't mind…

He huffed, and buried his face in his pillow. He could never figure out what the right line was between clingy and distant.

Well, refusing to talk to someone for three days was definitely distant, so a little clingy wasn't going to hurt anyone.

Was it?

Maybe he was switching too fast. Maybe it seemed pushy, or manipulative. Maybe—

He groaned into his pillow.

"Shut up, brain," he said. He was doing the best he could. He wouldn't know until someone told him.

He grabbed his phone and got out of bed, stretching towards the ceiling, onto his tiptoes, before walking out to his kitchen.

The memory of three nights ago still hung in the air. He wasn't really upset about it anymore—he was never really upset about "it," what Roxas did, in the first place. It just…reminded him of some stuff he would have rather not been reminded of.

He went to his fridge and tried not to think about it. Food. Food was good—especially since he hadn't been eating much. He could manage a few pieces of toast, at least.

He had just about finished with said toast when his phone started ringing.

He checked the screen.

Roxas.

Shit—he should have thought about what he was going to say to him. He almost wanted to let it ring, but…no. He was the one who asked him to call. That would just be mean.

He answered it.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," said Roxas back. He sounded quiet. Maybe it was just the connection. "How are you?"

"I'm…" Axel thought about it for a moment. "I'm alright," he said. "I'm better now than I was."

"That's good."

There were voices in the background, behind Roxas's speech.

"Hey, listen," said Axel, "I want to apologize. I got upset at you and that wasn't really fair."

"Um," went Roxas. "Apology accepted. I don't think there's…I'm not mad or anything though…"

Axel sighed.

"I don't really know what I'm trying to say," he said, rubbing the back of his head. "I just…I wasn't really upset with you, honestly. I've just had some bad experiences with…with being outed, and it sort of…I felt like you were going to react like that, even though part of me knew you wouldn't. I trust you, but it's hard to remember that sometimes. If that makes any sense…"

The line was silent for a moment.

"Yeah," said Roxas. "That makes sense."

"Okay…well…I don't know. I try not to do this but…it actually happens kind of a lot. Kind of a lot a lot. And sometimes my friends end up having to deal with it. So…so if you want to keep your distance then I'd understand."

"Do you want me to?" Roxas asked. "To keep my distance?"

Axel didn't even have to think about it.

"No," he said. "Not at all."

"Then…I want to be here for you."

Axel smiled at his counter. He felt tears coming. What, more of these?

"Well…could you do me a favor, then?"

"Um," went Roxas, "sure, I guess."

"Pretend you didn't see that ID for, like, half a second."

"Okay…?"

"Are you pretending?"

"I'm pretending."

"Okay. Then, Roxas, I have something to tell you."

"Oh…?"

"I'm a trans guy. My ID says female on it for some reason. Surprise." There, that wasn't so painful.

The line was quiet for a moment.

"Oh," is what Roxas said, eventually. "Okay."

Axel couldn't help but laugh. 'Oh, okay?' That was simultaneously the worst and probably the best response Axel had ever gotten.

"There," he said. "All better. Thanks."

"That's what friends are for, right?"

Axel grinned at his counter.

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Roxas was such a dork. It was wonderful. "Hey, I wanna make it up to you. Do you want to get dinner sometime?"

"Dinner?" Roxas repeated. "I kind of feel like I should be the one doing that…"

"Well, you can buy mine and I'll buy yours. Then we'll be even."

"What?" Roxas said, laughing. "Okay. That works, I guess? When did you want to go?"

"Hmm. Well, I'm probably going to end up putting in some penalty hours at work," ouch, "So maybe sometime next week? Would that work?"

"Uh, yeah," said Roxas. "I mean, probably."

"Probably works. We can figure out a time later, hm?"

"Sure. Um. Goodbye, then?"

"Goodbye," Axel said. "I—" No. He couldn't say that. "I'm…glad you're my friend."

"Yeah," said Roxas. "Me, too."

"Okay…bye for real now."

Roxas laughed. "Goodbye. See you soon."

That was…nice to hear.

* * *

><p>They'd decided on meeting at a burger joint that was mutually convenient for both of them—and not too much of a burden on Roxas's poor high schooler wallet. Though, honestly, Axel was probably about as well off as he was. A pocketful of birthday money lasts a lot longer when you're a teenager.<p>

The first thing Roxas did when he showed up was hold his arms out at Axel.

Axel frowned at him.

"Come on," said Roxas. "Or do you not want a hug?"

Oh, is that what was going on here?

"I dunno," Axel said, grinning. "You're pretty far down there, I don't know if I can reach."

Roxas huffed, and put his arms down. "_Jerk_."

Axel laughed. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Come here." He held a single arm out, but when Roxas came close enough he wrapped both his arms around his waist and hauled him up to eye level.

"Ah-!" went Roxas. But he quickly accepted his new altitude and threw his arms around Axel's shoulders, hugging him anyways.

On a scale of one to awesome, this was probably one of the best hugs Axel had ever gotten.

He placed Roxas down, gently.

"Okay," he said, "Enough sappiness, let's get something to eat."

* * *

><p>Roxas must have been starving or something—well, he was a teenager, they were known to eat everything in sight, weren't they?—because he still managed to make quick progress through his burger while talking almost constantly. Apparently something big had happened in the video…game-o-sphere…and it didn't take much prompting for Roxas to start telling Axel every little detail of what was going on.<p>

It was kind of adorable, actually, though Axel really wished he would stop thinking that. In any case, it was pretty rare to see Roxas get this outwardly animated about something.

"So we're finally getting to see all of this unreleased content that apparently bridges the storyline between all these games, and they might be adding in a remake of this other game that no one's played because it's on this really old system and it's, like, impossible—"

Halfway through this particular bit of information, Roxas started rotating one of his hands back and forth excitedly in a somewhat atypical fashion. Axel took small note of it, hardly thinking much of it—but then Roxas paused, frowned, and stuck his hands under the table.

"Uh, er," he tried to pick up his train of thought again. "Anyways…"

Axel frowned. Right. Most people didn't do that, did they?

"You don't have to stop," he said.

"Well, yeah, I just forgot what—"

"No, not that."

Roxas blinked at him, face blank. Apparently he had no idea what Axel was talking about.

"Your hands," said Axel. "You were…" Hm. Did Roxas know that word? "You were doing this," he said, imitating the movement for a moment. "You don't have to stop."

Roxas flushed and looked down at the table, picking at his food. Axel felt an unbidden surge of anger—not _at_ Roxas, but definitely _about _Roxas—and tried to keep it from showing.

"Do people tell you not to do that?" he said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could. "Who?"

"Not really…I don't know…"

Roxas sighed, and Axel's anger all but dissipated. Ah—he'd upset him, hadn't he? Sometimes he forgot that righteous anger wasn't always a welcome reaction to this kind of thing.

"People don't really tell me to stop, they just kind of make fun of me for it," Roxas said to his plate. "One of my friends told me it makes me look, um…retarded."

Axel frowned, scrunching his nose up. Well, wasn't that just great.

"That's not a very nice thing for them to say," Axel said, not entirely sure how else to put it.

"Yeah, I know." Roxas sighed. "It is kind of weird though, isn't it?"

"No," said Axel, decidedly. "It's perfectly normal."

Roxas frowned, apparently perplexed at this answer. "No one else does it, though. I mean, I've never seen anyone do it."

"I know a lot of people that do that. Well, not _exactly_ that, but stuff like that. People just show their excitement in different ways, that's all. If people make fun of you for that, then…" you should punch them _right_ in the face. No, that probably wasn't the best piece of advice. "They're…not being very nice, and that's a problem with them, not you."

Roxas shrugged slightly at this, apparently having no further response.

"…anyways," Axel said, in a weak attempt to salvage Roxas's excitement. "You were about to tell me when that game's coming out , right?"

"Oh. Yeah. Well…"

It didn't take him that long to get back into the swing of it.


End file.
